The United Arab Emirates sent one of its most senior diplomats to Lima this week, marking a strategic effort to diversify trade channels beyond traditional oil markets and Asian corridors. The formal gesture—Reem Al Hashimy's attendance at Peru's presidential inauguration on July 28—signals a broader strategic intent: the UAE is treating Latin America not as a distant outlier but as a genuine economic frontier worth years of sustained investment and diplomatic cultivation.
Why This Matters for UAE Residents and Investors
• Air Services Agreement signed: The Air Services Agreement (finalized July 29) creates the regulatory framework for potential commercial routes between the UAE and Peru, which could accelerate freight times for perishables, minerals, and technology exports that currently loop through Asia or Europe.
• Investment treaties under negotiation: Both governments are negotiating investment-protection treaties and double-taxation avoidance agreements, which would shield Emirati capital from policy uncertainties and reduce pricing barriers that have historically deterred Gulf investors from South America.
• Renewable energy exploration: Peru's wind and solar potential has drawn interest from Masdar, the UAE's flagship clean-energy operator, as the company surveys sites for potential partnerships in engineering, grid modernization, and equipment supply.
The Bigger Picture: Why Peru Matters Now
The timing of Al Hashimy's visit coincided with a flurry of formal agreements that had been quietly maturing for months. On July 29, Mohammed Abdullah Al Shamsi, the UAE's ambassador to Peru, and Gervasi Díaz, Peru's Foreign Minister, signed the Air Services Agreement—a document that aviation analysts expect will position Lima as a hub for Gulf carriers targeting the entire South American continent. The pact also lays groundwork for follow-on treaties that typically arrive once aviation ties stabilize: investment protections, tax harmonization deals, and potentially joint ventures in port operations or logistics.
Peru holds particular appeal for UAE investors. The country controls substantial reserves of copper, zinc, and silver—metals essential to the global energy transition—and its Pacific coastline provides access to shipping lanes connecting Asia, North America, and Europe. That geographic position has already attracted Emirati operators. State-linked port and logistics firms from Dubai and Abu Dhabi maintain stakes in Peru's free-trade zones and container terminals, positioning themselves to capture both inbound raw materials destined for Gulf refineries and outbound re-exports heading to Asia or Africa.
The bilateral relationship itself turned 40 years old on June 17, and both governments used the milestone to underscore their commitment to deeper collaboration. In January 2026, Peru's ambassador to the UAE, Alberto Farje, met with Mohammad Ali Lootah, president and CEO of Dubai Chambers, to reaffirm economic cooperation commitments. That conversation laid the diplomatic groundwork for the agreements finalized six months later.
Al Hashimy's Larger Latin America Tour
During her stay in the Peruvian capital, Al Hashimy conducted a mini-regional summit, holding separate meetings with five Latin American leaders—a diplomatic efficiency move that allowed the UAE to deepen ties with multiple countries in a single trip. She met Daniel Noboa (Ecuador's president), Rodrigo Paz Pereira (Bolivia's president), José Manuel Restrepo (Colombia's vice president-elect), Francisco Gamboa Soto (Costa Rica's first vice president), and Mireya Agüero (Honduras's foreign minister). The agenda was consistent across all five conversations: trade expansion, food security, renewable energy infrastructure, digital transformation, and disaster management protocols.
This back-to-back diplomacy reflects a deliberate strategy. Rather than making isolated visits to each country, the UAE consolidated its outreach around Peru's inauguration, reducing travel costs and maximizing media visibility. It also sent a signal to other Latin American governments that Abu Dhabi is serious about multi-country engagement, not one-off transactional deals.
Building on Existing Frameworks
The UAE's Latin America strategy doesn't start with Peru. It's part of a broader campaign that accelerated in 2026. Earlier this year, a UAE Trade Days delegation toured Panama, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and Guyana, scouting investment opportunities and pitching Emirati expertise in renewable energy, fintech, and agricultural technology. That delegation also attended the Mercosur Summit in Paraguay, signaling that Abu Dhabi is treating Latin American trade blocs, not just individual countries, as strategic partners.
The results are measurable. Non-oil trade between the UAE and Mercosur member states (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) hit $6.2 billion in 2025, and both sides are currently negotiating a broader Mercosur-UAE Free Trade Agreement. Separately, the UAE has locked in Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPAs) with Chile and Costa Rica—both came into force in 2025—and signed a CEPA with Colombia in April 2024. Negotiations for a Peru CEPA are ongoing, with officials on both sides expecting a draft within months.
These agreements do practical work: they slash tariffs on goods, open service sectors to Gulf competition, and create expedited visa lanes for business travelers. For Emirati logistics firms, engineers, and tech companies, a Peru CEPA would mean faster market entry and fewer bureaucratic friction points when setting up regional headquarters or subsidiaries.
Energy: The Renewable Opportunity
Masdar, the UAE's renewable-energy operator, had expanded its installed capacity to 65 gigawatts by January 2026, much of it concentrated in wind and solar parks outside the Gulf region. Latin America's wind potential—especially in Argentina, Chile, and Peru—has made the continent attractive to Masdar's expansion strategy. During Al Hashimy's meetings with Peruvian officials, energy cooperation ranked among the top agenda items, with Masdar exploring potential wind-farm sites along Peru's Pacific coast and identifying partnership opportunities with local utilities.
For UAE-based renewable energy companies and engineering firms, Peru's energy sector represents an entry point into a much larger South American market. The continent has decades of underinvestment in grid modernization, and that gap creates opportunities for Gulf expertise in project financing, equipment sourcing, and operational management.
The Competitive Landscape
The UAE's Latin America pivot also reflects competition from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which have ramped up their own regional engagement. Riyadh has concentrated on agribusiness and mining deals, while Doha has focused on liquefied natural gas and media infrastructure. The UAE's edge lies in its port and logistics expertise, combined with its willingness to invest in digital-transformation projects—areas where Latin American governments face chronic underfunding and where Chinese competitors, despite their dominance, have occasionally struggled with labor disputes and environmental pushback.
China remains by far the largest external investor in Latin America, but the UAE offers something complementary: faster decision-making, lower geopolitical friction, and institutional knowledge in free-zone administration and port concessions. For Latin American governments seeking alternatives to Beijing's approach, Abu Dhabi presents a viable option.
The Roadmap Forward
The UAE government has set an ambitious target for non-oil foreign trade across all regions: AED 4 trillion (approximately $1.1 trillion) by 2031. Latin America now sits as an important part of that broader strategy. To accelerate momentum, the International Finance Corporation and the World Governments Summit are co-hosting the first-ever Latin America and Caribbean Investment Forum in Dubai this February, bringing together fund managers, infrastructure developers, and government procurement officials from across the hemisphere.
For Peru specifically, the next diplomatic milestone is likely President Keiko Fujimori's state visit to Abu Dhabi, which diplomats expect will occur before year-end. That trip would provide the formal stage for signing ceremonies on the investment-protection treaty, the double-taxation agreement, and possibly a memorandum of understanding on renewable energy or defense cooperation.
In the interim, the machinery of private investment continues quietly. UAE-based logistics firms are expanding their Peruvian operations, Masdar engineers are surveying wind-farm sites in the Andes, and Emirati agritech startups are field-testing precision-irrigation systems with local farming cooperatives. The diplomatic ceremony in Lima was merely the visible layer of a much larger, multi-year campaign to position Gulf capital and expertise throughout Latin America—one aviation agreement, one port concession, and one trade pact at a time.
