This was posted on the PLE board - should be an incentive for Ecuador to get their mining activities in gear as Peru seems to be benefiting from all the activity.

Peru Economy Expanded 9.9% in December on Mining

By Alex Emery

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Peru's economy expanded 9.9 percent in December from a year earlier on surging construction, copper and natural gas output, the national statistics institute reported.

Gross domestic product grew 9 percent through the end of 2007, the fastest annual rate since 1994, the institute said in a statement. Economic growth in December was faster than the 8.9 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 10 economists.

Rising consumer demand is powering a seventh year of economic growth, creating jobs and higher real wages, said Boris Segura, a Latin America economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.

``Peru's growth rate is spectacular,'' Segura said in a telephone interview. ``Growth is broad-based and has moved well- beyond mining to other areas such as construction, thanks to credit availability.''

Construction rose 16.5 percent in 2007, while manufacturing, retail sales, electricity and agriculture all rose 10 percent, the institute said

Copper production rose 16.4 percent last year as Freeport- McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. tripled output at its Cerro Verde mine, while zinc rose 20 percent and natural gas jumped by one- half, the institute said.

Peru, the world's third-largest copper, zinc and tin producer and No. 5 in gold, has benefited from surging metals prices, which boosted the Andean country's exports to a record $27.6 billion last year.

``Real-sector commodity prices have recouped a directional upward trend, with positive implications for Andean metal- exporting economies,'' Pablo Breard, chief international analyst of Bank of Nova Scotia, wrote in a report today.

Peru's sol fell 0.1 percent to 2.9050 soles to the dollar after the central bank bought $349 million on the exchange market this week in a bid to slow the sol's gains.