Alfredo Thorne, former Peruvian finance minister and partner at Global Source: “Recent protests have had a political motivation and also an economic one. While Peru had outstanding growth performance from 2001-2016, disparities between regions and income brackets increased. Since 2017, when the political crisis started, the per-capita growth rate stalled on the back of populist policies. This was aggravated even further during the pandemic when Peru had one of the highest death rates from Covid-19, exceeding 200,000, and only one in five workers had a formal job. Unfortunately, few of these disparities were addressed by the governments in office since 2017. Most decided, instead, to implement a patrimonialism model; former President Petro Castillo was an extreme in terms of cronyism. Against this backdrop, the protests are unsurprising, taking a toll on the south of Peru. The city of Juliaca, where the protests took place earlier this month became…”