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Peru Public Administration
Public administration in Peru, already one of the
weakest on
the continent as of 1968, has experienced a dramatic
increase in
the size of state enterprises and the number of civil
servants.
That increase has been accompanied by a gradual decrease
in
available funds to run the administration, partly because
of the
inefficiency of several of the state-sector enterprises.
The
Petroleum Enterprise of Peru (Petroleras de
Perú--Petroperú), for
example, lost US$700 million in 1987 alone. Tax collection
has
been virtually nonexistent, with the government having to
rely on
a tax base of 7 percent of gross national product
(GNP--see Glossary),
a figure comparable to Bangladesh's 8.6 percent
and
Uganda's 8.2 percent. Public expenditures per person were
US$1,100 in 1975; in 1990 they were only US$180.
These trends were exacerbated markedly during the
1985-90
APRA government of García, as party patronage practices
dominated
the administration of the state, and the number of state
employees increased from about 282,400 in 1985 to almost
833,000
in 1990, while government resources all but disappeared
because
of enormous fiscal deficits and hyperinflation.
State-sector
workers were not even paid during the last few months of
the
García government.
The result was a rise in corruption and inefficiency,
and
Peru had one of the most inefficient state sectors in the
world.
Improvements in the future were likely to be guided by
budgetary
constraints, as the resources simply did not exist to
maintain
the existing number of civil servants in the public
administration. The short-term costs would be a cutback in
already scarce public services and a possible increase in
political protest among displaced civil servants. Most
Peruvians
simply did without the services that even a minimal public
administration would normally offer, or else they found
some way
of attaining them in the informal sector, usually at a
much
higher price.
Data as of September 1992
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