Alfredo E. Thorne, principal director at Thorne & Associates and former Peruvian finance minister: “Finance Minister José Salardi, after being appointed on Jan. 31, vowed to stimulate private investment by focusing on public-private partnerships (PPP) from government agency ProInversión. He knows this agency well; before becoming a minister, he was its head and bid out several large projects. He has identified $30 billion in PPP investments, some of which are new projects, and others of which are ongoing projects waiting to sign an addendum with the government. Most notable are about $7 billion for irrigation projects on the coast of Peru by bringing water from the highlands and increasing arable land by about 1 million hectares. Since the late 1990s, Peru has expanded its arable land by 5.7 million hectares and implemented the drip irrigation technology brought from Israel that has allowed to extend the farmland along the coastal desert by…”