1 July 2026  |  Market Intelligence  |  Peru  |  LATAM South

Why Peru? The Case for LATAM South Real Assets in 2026

Among the world’s resource-rich jurisdictions competing for global capital, Peru occupies a position that is structurally undervalued relative to its fundamentals. It is the world’s third-largest copper producer, ranks ninth globally in gold production, sits in the global top five for silver, zinc, lead, and molybdenum, hosts one of the fastest-growing renewable energy pipelines in Latin America, and sits on agricultural land and water resources of continental significance.

Yet for many institutional investors, whether based in Zurich, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, or Singapore, Peru has historically been filtered out by political risk assessments that were accurate five years ago but increasingly lag the reality on the ground. Three forces have converged in mid-2026 to change that calculus materially: a pro-investment election result that has restored confidence among both international and local investors, metal prices at or near multi-year highs across the entire Peruvian commodity basket, and an acceleration of capital flows into LATAM South real assets that is already well underway.

The Election: Restored Confidence, Not Eliminated Risk

Peru’s June 7 presidential runoff delivered a narrow but consequential result. Keiko Fujimori, leader of the conservative Popular Force party, won the presidency by approximately 35,000 votes over left-wing candidate Roberto Sanchez, with official certification by the National Jury of Elections expected by mid-July 2026.

The reaction from the investment community was immediate and telling. Prior to the vote, business confidence in Peru had fallen in April to its lowest level in almost two years, Peru’s bonds and currency had lagged regional peers, and capital allocation decisions in mining and energy were being delayed pending electoral clarity. The contrast with the post-result mood is sharp. Fujimori campaigned on an unapologetic defence of Peru’s market-led economic model, pledging clearer rules to attract foreign capital, a fast-track approval mechanism for strategically significant projects, and policy continuity for the framework that has underpinned Peru’s roughly 3% annual economic growth through a decade of presidential turnover. Moody’s had assessed that a Fujimori victory would more likely preserve Peru’s existing macroeconomic framework and credit stability, a signal that institutional capital had been waiting for.

Just as revealing as the international reaction is the signal coming from within Peru itself. Grupo Romero, one of the country’s largest and most respected conglomerates, completed the acquisition of Orygen in March 2026, buying Peru’s second-largest power generation platform with 2.3 GW of installed capacity through its infrastructure arm InfraCorp. The acquisition, from global infrastructure fund Actis, gives Grupo Romero control of approximately 14% of Peru’s total power generation mix and positions it as a cornerstone player in the country’s energy transition. Orygen is also in the middle of a USD 3 billion investment programme targeting renewables expansion through 2030.

This move is significant beyond its deal metrics. Grupo Romero did not enter Peru’s energy sector speculatively. The group’s logic is rooted in a straightforward structural view: mining, construction, and infrastructure activity in Peru will continue to grow, and that growth requires electricity. By controlling the second-largest generation platform in the country, Grupo Romero is positioning to capture a core input to Peru’s entire real asset economy. When one of Peru’s wealthiest and most operationally rigorous business families makes that bet with that scale of capital, it is a credibility signal that no external analyst report can replicate.

The political risk picture for Peru has improved materially. It has not been eliminated. Fujimori’s narrow margin limits her mandate, and effective governing will require coalition-building. The JNE certification process runs to mid-July, and Sanchez has not conceded. Investors should monitor cabinet appointments in the first 90 days, particularly at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, as the most reliable early indicator of how literally Fujimori intends to implement her pro-investment platform. But the left-tail risk of contract renegotiation, royalty nationalisation, and constitutional reform, which was a live scenario under the alternative outcome, has been removed from the near-term investment calculus.

Metal Prices: The Macro Tailwind

The commodity price environment entering the second half of 2026 is broadly supportive of Peru’s mining sector economics. Copper, the anchor metal for the Peruvian investment case, closed May 2026 at approximately USD 6.39/lb on the CME, up roughly 34% year-on-year, and reached a near-record of approximately USD 6.67/lb in June 2026. Goldman Sachs has a year-end 2026 copper target of approximately USD 13,735/tonne; Citi’s sits near USD 15,000/tonne. The structural demand driver is well understood: electrification of transport, AI data centre buildout, renewable generation capacity, and grid modernisation all require copper at scales that current production cannot satisfy. Global copper demand is forecast to grow approximately 70% by 2050, and Peru, as the world’s third-largest producer with 2.77 million metric tons produced in 2025, is a direct structural beneficiary.

Gold and silver, while correcting from their January 2026 records (gold peaked near USD 5,586/oz, silver near USD 121/oz), remain elevated relative to any five-year historical average and continue to attract central bank buying. Peru’s polymetallic deposit character means many projects carry meaningful gold and silver by-product credits that materially improve project-level economics at current prices. For institutional investors building a commodity exposure thesis, Peru offers something single-commodity jurisdictions cannot: credible exposure to copper, gold, silver, zinc, and molybdenum within a single legal and infrastructure framework.

The Geological Endowment: An Extraordinary and Still Underutilised Asset

Peru’s geological endowment is one of the most remarkable on the planet. Its porphyry copper systems, concentrated in the southern Andes, are among the highest-grade and most extensive anywhere. A defining characteristic of Peruvian deposits is their polymetallic nature: a single project frequently contains economically significant concentrations of copper, gold, silver, zinc, lead, and molybdenum simultaneously, improving capital efficiency and providing natural revenue diversification that few other jurisdictions can offer at the project level. Increasingly, the Andean corridor is also yielding concentrations of critical transition minerals including lithium, cobalt, tin, gallium, and germanium, adding a further dimension to Peru’s long-term resource significance.

What makes this endowment particularly compelling is how much of it remains underexplored and underdeveloped. Peru’s 715 identified mining projects carry combined investment requirements of approximately USD 52 billion according to MINEM, yet the vast majority are at early or pre-development stages. The gap between geological potential and realised production is not a ceiling, it is an entry point. Exploration spending climbed toward USD 1 billion in 2025, up roughly 20% year-on-year and the highest level since 2014, reflecting growing recognition among global capital of what the Peruvian subsurface contains. Mining investment hit approximately USD 6 billion in 2025. The structural story for the coming decade is the systematic conversion of this extraordinary geological inventory into producing assets, and the capital, advisory, and representation requirements that process will generate.

Peru’s renewable energy potential mirrors its mining story: vast, largely unrealised, and increasingly attractive to the global capital flows that the energy transition is directing toward low-cost generation jurisdictions. The southern corridor of Arequipa and Moquegua has solar irradiance conditions that place it among the most competitive locations for utility-scale solar anywhere in the world. The technical renewable energy potential across Peru, at an estimated 17 GW confirmed pipeline and multiples of that in identified but uncommitted resources, dwarfs current installed capacity. The full conversion of this potential into operating generation assets over the next decade represents one of the most significant infrastructure investment stories in the region.

Four Sectors. One Jurisdiction.

The Capital Landscape: Who Is Already Here

Peru’s investment landscape is more internationally competitive than many outside the region appreciate. Understanding who is already allocating capital, and through which structures, is essential context for any new entrant.

Canadian and North American junior explorers have been among the most active capital deployers in Peru for years, funded primarily through TSX and TSX-V equity markets. Active programmes in 2026 include Coppernico Metals (TSX: COPR) at its Sombrero copper project; Tinka Resources (TSXV: TK) at Ayawilca zinc-silver-tin; Aftermath Silver (TSXV: AAG) at Berenguela silver-copper-manganese; Pecoy Copper (TSXV: PCU) delivering multi-hundred-metre copper intercepts; and Condor Resources (TSXV: CN) drilling copper-gold at Cobreorco in Apurimac. These companies are systematically de-risking early-stage assets and increasingly seeking co-investors and strategic partners with on-the-ground operational capabilities.

Major mining companies are equally committed. Southern Copper Corporation has announced USD 10.3 billion in development investment across multiple Peruvian projects. Fortescue of Australia completed its acquisition of Alta Copper’s Canariaco project in March 2026 for C$139 million, a project capable of producing 140,000 tonnes of copper per year. BHP’s Xplor programme selected Firetail Resources for active copper drilling in Peru, illustrating the growing trend of majors using juniors as early-stage discovery engines.

Chinese capital has made the most systematic long-term commitments, with aggregate investment approaching USD 20 billion across strategic asset acquisitions and development projects, anchored by the transformative Port of Chancay megaport. European energy majors are heavily present in the renewable sector: Enel Green Power has announced development of 3 GW of solar and wind projects; Iberdrola is developing the 500 MW Andes solar project in Arequipa and the 300 MW Loma Blanca wind project; TotalEnergies is developing the 250 MW San Gaban battery energy storage system. These are not exploratory allocations, they are committed capital programmes by institutions with decade-long presence in the market.

European institutional investors, infrastructure funds, pension allocators, and family offices have historically been slower to allocate directly to LATAM South real assets compared to their North American and Asian counterparts. The access gap is not a reflection of geological or return quality; it is a reflection of information asymmetry, local representation gaps, and the absence of trusted intermediaries who can navigate both the institutional standards expected in Zurich or Amsterdam and the operational realities of Arequipa or Cajamarca. That gap is precisely what Montis Silva is positioned to bridge.

Structural Risks: Honest Assessment

Why the Entry Window Matters Now

Peru’s exploration spend nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025. Renewable capacity tracked a similar trajectory. Latin American mining capex is projected to grow 8.4% in 2026. Copper is near all-time highs with a structurally bullish demand outlook. And for the first time in five years, Peru has elected a government that is explicitly pro-investment, backed by a Moody’s assessment of macroeconomic continuity, and signalled by the country’s own leading business groups through major capital commitments in the energy sector.

These forces do not create a risk-free environment. They create a risk-adjusted entry point that is more favourable now than at any point since the Castillo election in 2021 introduced left-tail political risk that repriced the entire jurisdiction. Investors who waited for that risk to resolve have already paid for that caution in higher entry costs on assets that moved first.

The window for early-mover positioning in quality Peruvian real assets remains open. It will not remain open indefinitely as more global capital discovers what Canadian juniors, European energy majors, and Peru’s own conglomerates already know.

The Montis Silva Role

Peru is Montis Silva’s home market and the anchor of its LATAM South platform. Our management is permanently based in Lima, operationally embedded in Peru’s mining, renewable energy, infrastructure, and agricultural sectors, and maintains the institutional relationships, regulatory knowledge, and local network that can only be built through sustained, long-term presence. This is not a serviced office or a periodic visit, it is a permanent, on-the-ground commitment to the Peruvian market.

From Lima, Montis Silva operates across the broader LATAM South region, covering Colombia, Chile, and Argentina through its partner network and through direct project-based assignments where our management engages directly. Peru remains the operational and strategic centre of gravity from which all regional activity is coordinated.

For investors evaluating Peru specifically, Montis Silva offers something that remote advisory and research subscription services cannot: real-time, embedded intelligence on regulatory developments, off-market transaction opportunities, local partner quality, and community dynamics that determine whether projects advance or stall. That on-the-ground intelligence, combined with Swiss-credentialed institutional governance standards, is the combination that global capital needs to access Peru’s real asset opportunity responsibly.