The Agriculture and Economics of Peru

Peru's gross domestic product in the late 1980s was $19.6 billion, or about $920 per capita. Although the economy remains primarily agricultural, the mining and fishing industries have become increasingly important. Peru relies primarily on the export of raw materials--chiefly minerals, farm products, and fish meal--to earn foreign exchange for importing machinery and manufactured goods. During the late 1980s, guerrilla violence, rampant inflation, chronic budget deficits, and drought combined to drive the country to the brink of …

…and Arequipa. Aeroperú, the national airline, offers domestic and international service.         Peru's telephone system, which was nationalized in 1970, has some 600,000 instruments. The country is served by more than 300 radio stations and 8 television stations. In the late 1980s about 4 million radios and 1.6 million television receivers were in use. In the same period the country had more than 70 daily newspapers. Dailies with large circulations included El Comercio, Expreso, Ojo, and La República, all published in Lima.