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Peru Turns the Page to Fujimori — but the Informal-Mining Clock Is the Live Risk

Keiko Fujimori won June's razor-thin runoff and is inaugurated on 28 July, ending a stretch that produced four heads of state in under a year. For miners, the binding variable is not the palace but REINFO — the informal-mining register whose repeated extensions have quietly become Peru's most consequential mining-policy lever.

July 13, 2026·Peru·Copper · Silver · Gold·5 min read

What happened

On 3 July Peru's National Jury of Elections proclaimed Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular) the winner of the 7 June runoff, by roughly fifty thousand votes out of more than eighteen million cast. She is sworn in on 28 July — the country's next head of state after a chaotic run that saw Dina Boluarte removed in October 2025, José Jerí take office and then be removed by Congress in February 2026, and the caretaker José María Balcázar bridge the gap to the election.

The mining-policy fulcrum sits below the presidency. In late December 2025, Law 32537 extended REINFO — the Integral Mining Formalisation Register — to 31 December 2026, prolonging a scheme that has run since 2016 and now covers tens of thousands of informal operators. The law ties the register to a future “MAPE” small-scale-mining statute, mandates a national artisanal-mining census, and demands georeferenced declarations from registrants. But the statute's design — and whether a Congress already floating a further extension to 2027 instead lets the register lapse — remains unsettled.

Why it matters for dispute formation

Peru's mining risk has rarely been de jure expropriation. It is ground-level control: transport-corridor blockades, consultation grievances, and an informal-mining frontier the state alternately tolerates and interdicts. REINFO is the pivot — a de facto amnesty whose extension keeps informal operators in a legal grey zone that overlaps formal concessions, and whose eventual expiry could criminalise a working population overnight. Either path reshapes the social-licence and security risk around title-holding operators.

A Fujimori administration signals a pro-investment, security-forward posture — but signals are not decrees. What matters for the arbitration file is the documentary and consultation record an operator builds now, before a corridor closes or a formalisation deadline detonates. When a dispute crystallises in Peru, tribunals reward the operator that can show it consulted, disclosed and complied; they discount the one that assumed the state would keep the peace.

Who's exposed

Hudbay Minerals

Runs Constancia in the southern copper corridor of Cusco, the same transport spine along which neighbouring operations have lost hundreds of days to community blockades. Hudbay's continuity turns less on title than on how the incoming government polices the corridor and the informal-mining frontier around it.

Compañía de Minas Buenaventura

Peru's largest precious-metals house, ramping San Gabriel and holding associate stakes in Cerro Verde and Yanacocha. Its permitting and social-licence calculus is directly exposed to the REINFO extension and to the shape of the small-scale-mining law that is meant to replace it.

Hochschild Mining

Operates Inmaculada and the Pallancata/Royropata complex in Ayacucho — terrain where artisanal-mining overlap and the formalisation regime bear directly on ground control, security and the renewal pipeline.

The historical parallel · Copper Mesa v. Ecuador (PCA 2012)

The Andean cautionary tale is not confiscation but consent. Ecuador was held liable when community opposition collapsed Copper Mesa's Junín concession — yet the tribunal cut the award by roughly a third for the investor's own conduct toward the people opposing it. The read-across for Peru through this transition: when a project dies in the field, a treaty claim survives, but the damages turn on the consultation-and-conduct record — and a state that can point to genuine community opposition rarely pays in full.

What to watch

Whether the new government lets REINFO lapse on 31 December 2026, extends it again, or finally enacts the MAPE law — and how each option treats operators whose concessions overlap informal claims.
Early energy-and-mines cabinet appointments and any signal on the southern copper corridor and Las Bambas-style transport security.
Prior-consultation (consulta previa) practice under the new administration, especially for renewals and expansions.
Whether social conflict re-escalates around the Cusco–Apurímac–Arequipa corridor as the transition settles.

Sources

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For general information only; not legal advice, and no attorney–client relationship is formed through this article. Company names appear because the operators are exposed to a public development — not as a statement of wrongdoing or a predicted outcome. Figures are as reported by the linked sources.