By IPS Correspondents
LIMA, Oct 22 2000 (IPS)

Peru’s potato farmers would not have lost 460,000 tonnes from their last harvest if a network of public Internet terminals, like the ones that are to be installed in low- income rural communities starting next year, had been functioning.

Most of the potatos lost were left in the ground by peasant farmers, because the low prices on the market would not even have covered the costs of harvesting.

“The excellent prices of the previous harvest and the lack of information on market conditions led potato producers to plant nearly 20 percent more than normal,” said agronomist Teodosio Echeverría. The result was a flooded market and extremely low prices.

Alongside drought and other natural catastrophes, low prices are a bogey of peasants in societies like Peru, where the state neither regulates prices nor helps programme crops.

“The government bought up part of the surplus for its food aid programme, but the purchases were not sufficient,” said Echeverría.

According to economist Laura Teves, “in the framework of the liberal market economy, socially-oriented mechanisms for the scheduling of crops, such as the techniques put into practice by the leftist military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado from 1969 to 1975, are not possible.

“In consequence, the only solution is to provide peasant farmers with instruments for obtaining information on market trends, in order to optimise their decision-making capacity,” she added.

The public Internet booths will be operated by private companies, which will receive state financing given the scant returns they can hope for in the market where the service will be provided.

Sometime in the first quarter of 2001, the public entity supervising private investment in the telecommunications sector (Osiptel) will make a call for projects for installing Internet terminals giving the public access in rural areas.

Osiptel will adapt the project chosen to bring it into line with the guidelines established by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, which defines as “rural” villages with less than 100 adjacent households or areas with more than 100 dispersed households.

Preference will be given to populations with low buying power in areas located far from towns or cities, where the main economic activities are farming, stockbreeding, fishing or mining.

“Since we are talking about areas of low commercial profitability and high social impact, financial and technical support will be given the private firms interested in operating the service,” said Karen Garrido, with the Osiptel communications office.

The regulations governing the tendering stipulate that not only the installations themselves will be financed, but also training programmes to teach local residents how to use the Internet, as well as the creation of databases with local and regional content.

“That will mean rural people can become not only receptors of information, but transmitters as well, allowing them to interact with the world in a satisfactory manner,” said Garrido.

“The idea is to benefit 5,000 peasant communities, with a combined population of three million,” she added. “Preference will be given to depressed areas with low population density, where the social impact will be highest.”

The call for bids will be issued by the Osiptel Investment Fund, which the Ministry of Transport and Communications has assigned 17 million dollars for the first phase of the project.

Luis Bonifaz, the president of the fund set up to finance the project, reported that the experiences of other countries were currently being studied.

The fund will finance the initial investment, operations and maintenance, complementary activities like engineering studies, purchases of equipment and materials, and access to and creation of content on the Internet.

“The loans could be repayable or non-refundable, but in no case will they be a direct subsidy to users, because the idea is to make the service financially self-sufficient,” said Bonifaz.

Garrido explained that in rural areas where telephone lines are non-existent, the public Internet booths will function by satellite.

The winning bid will be selected in accordance with the criteria of guaranteeing the greatest social impact in terms of access and distance from the nearest areas with telephone links, and the size of the population to be directly and indirectly benefited by the new service.

“Once the projects have been drawn up, they will be publicised and made available to investors through competitive public auctions,” said Bonifaz.

“The financing for each of the terminals can be sought from the fund by any legal entity or person: municipal governments, entities set up by interested local residents, or companies interested in providing this rural telecommunications service,” he concluded.

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