What Keiko Fujimori’s victory means for Peru’s mining industry.

BY SEBASTIAN PEREZ-FERREIRO

A razor-thin mandate, a Congress once again bicameral, and a $63 billion project pipeline can reset Peru’s political risk equation for the first time in decades.

A narrow win, but a wide opening for mining capital

Peru’s President Keiko Fujimori steps into office with the narrowest of electoral mandates but with the strongest congressional backing in the country’s recent history.

Since Ollanta Humala left office in 2016 after finishing his tenure, eight politicians have occupied the presidential palace in the last decade and none has completed a full term, with most cut short by impeachment or resignation. As a result, the country has come to expect its presidents will not serve a full five-year term.

Fujimori’s victory margin – less than half a percentage point – would seem to compound the executive power’s fragility. But for the first time in years, the structural conditions for a stable presidency align with a pro-business agenda – a combination that reshapes the calculus for every mining company with capital exposed to Peru.

Why this transition matters more than previous ones

Mining accounts for over 60% of Peru’s exports and nearly 10% of GDP. The Ministry of Energy and Mines lists 11 projects beginning construction in 2025-26, with investment exceeding $8 billion, while the broader undeveloped pipeline is estimated at $63 billion. Around 70% of that pipeline is concentrated in copper projects in the southern Andean corridor.

Fujimori’s program is the opposite of her left-wing runoff opponent Roberto Sánchez, who had proposed a partial nationalization of natural resources, an overhaul of the concession system, higher mining taxes, and a phased exit from open-pit operations. His economic team softened the rhetoric in the final stretch of the campaign, but the policy signal remained on the table and roughly half the country voted for it.

Fujimori will move in the opposite direction: a fast-track approval mechanism for strategically significant projects, profit-reinvestment tax incentives designed to keep capital inside Peru, and a redirection of 40% of mining royalties to host communities. The royalty proposal is the most consequential because it directly addresses the trigger of most recent mine shutdowns – communities that feel they bear the costs of extraction without sharing its benefits.

Why presidential instability complicates the mining industry’s planning

International investors often misread Peru’s truncated presidential terms as cyclical political noise, but it’s actually a structural feature of the country’s hybrid constitutional design, in which a unicameral congress held the executive on a short leash through a “permanent moral incapacity” clause that became a routine impeachment tool. Mining executives who plan around the assumption that an incoming president sets a new framework have repeatedly discovered that no head of state has lasted long enough to set anything.

Nevertheless, Fujimori is positioned to break that pattern. Her party, Fuerza Popular, will continue to hold the largest single bloc in Congress, with 41 out of 130 lower house seats and 22 out of 60 seats in the new Senate, after a constitutional reform restored bicameralism, making the impeachment of a president much harder.

What miners often get wrong about Peru’s political risk

Foreign miners usually make three wrong assumptions about Peru. First, treating presidential outcomes as the dominant variable when, in practice, social license at the community level determines whether a project can succeed. Second, assuming that pro-business rhetoric in Lima translates into reduced friction in the Apurímac, Cusco, or Cajamarca highlands. Third, underestimating Congress because the executive has historically been the loudest actor, even though legislators have been more decisive over the last decade.

A serious Peru risk assessment after this transition must model three layers simultaneously: a Fujimori presidency, the new bicameral Congress, and the community-level political landscape where projects live or die. The third layer is where the razor-thin national result matters most. Nearly half of the electorate that voted for resource-nationalist policies will not disappear from the southern Andean corridor.

What better intelligence unlocks

Miners should expect a 12- to 24-month policy window in which permit backlogs ease, fast-track project approvals are tested, and the new royalty allocation begins to alter the political economy of social conflict. That window will not stay open indefinitely. Mid-term legislative dynamics, community mobilization, and the question of whether bicameralism actually delivers stability will all reshape the operating environment.

Companies that use the window well by accelerating permits and locking in community agreements under the new royalty framework will outperform those in a wait-and-see mode. Companies that treat Fujimori’s pro-business agenda as a one-way trend rather than a contested mandate are likely to be caught off balance by community mobilization that does not wait until the next election.

Sebastian Perez-Ferreiro is Mining Practice Co-Director at Americas Market Intelligence.

Republished with permission from Americas Market Intelligence.

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