(Bloomberg) -- Peruvian authorities are keeping a wary eye on conditions in neighboring Bolivia, where a potential economic collapse could unleash a new wave of regional migration.
“Now, possibly, we are worried about the migration that could come from Bolivia,” said Peruvian Finance Minister Jose Arista in an interview in Lima. “There is a lot of uncertainty about internal economic activity.” Bolivia is almost out of foreign currency reserves, the currency is quickly devaluing, inflation is rapidly rising and widespread fuel shortages are impeding economic activity.
Arista later said he wasn’t greatly concerned about migration, but that the government should prioritize higher-skilled migrants.
In recent years, South America has been transformed by migration, mostly due to an exodus of 7 million Venezuelans seeking economic opportunity and safety. About 1.5 million of them have arrived in Peru in the past decade, fueling widespread xenophobia, raising concerns about transnational crime and pushing the government to resist more migration and make it easier to deport people.
A wave of Bolivians arriving in Peru would fit within that tense backdrop. Arista said that migration in general can be good for the economy, but there is a limit at any given time about how much labor can be immediately absorbed, especially if workers are low-skilled.
On the previous wave of Venezuelan migrants, Arista said: “The bad part is that maybe those workers came in a moment when we didn’t have the capacity to absorb their productive activities.”
The government is optimistic about Peru’s economy. That means, in Arista’s view, that Bolivian migrants are likely to choose Peru as their destination, over other neighbors.
“I think that population will choose Peru,” he said. “Chile is growing at less than 2%, Argentina is in a process of stabilization with negative growth, Peru is growing at 3% and our perspective for the next year, hopefully with a wave of optimism, is to grow at a faster rate.”
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