International Trade Agreements and the Peruvian Electricity Sector

International trade agreements are reshaping the economic context of the world by allowing freer flow of investments, goods and services. Energy and electricity products have this particular characteristic of ranging over both good and service classifications. How is electricity in particular treated within these trade agreements, which clearly distinguish between good and service sectors? How can the electricity sector be affected by new agreements? We answer these questions and analyze the Peruvian electricity sector, which has recently been reformed, but whose regulation might still contains some inconsistencies with principles of international trade agreements, specifically the Free Trade Agreements of the Americas (FTAA). We start in section 2 by setting the international trade context of Peru and then study in section 3 how electricity is considered in the FTAA and other international trade agreements, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Peruvian electricity sector is presented in section 4, to allow the analysis on the probable consequences of the FTAA on the electricity sector to be made in section 5.