Importing food into Peru: registration, permits and labels.

Peru charges little duty on food but guards the shelf closely: a DIGESA registration for processed food, SENASA permits for fresh and animal products, and black octagon warnings on the label. Here is how each works, what it costs at the border and how Paraguayan food gets in.

Low duty, three gatekeepers.

Food is not where Peru makes money at the border. Most food lines pay 0% or 6% duty, and goods from Peru’s many trade partners — Paraguay included, under ACE 58 — usually enter at zero. What decides whether a food product reaches a Lima shelf is the sanitary file: a registro sanitario from DIGESA for processed food, a SENASA import permit for fresh plant and animal products, and a label that meets Peru’s front-of-pack warning law, Law 30021, with its black octagons.

The general tax stack — 16% IGV, 2% municipal tax and the IGV prepayment (percepción) — is explained in our Peru customs guide. This article covers what is specific to food: who regulates what, how the registration works, the labelling rules, the tariff peaks and how Paraguayan food enters.

DIGESA, SENASA, SANIPES.

Peru splits food safety by stage of processing. The Ministry of Health’s DIGESA (Dirección General de Salud Ambiental e Inocuidad Alimentaria) covers processed, packaged food and drinks — in Peruvian terms, alimentos industrializados. The agriculture ministry’s SENASA (Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Agraria) covers plants, primary agricultural products and animals and their products, with its focus on pests and animal disease. SANIPES covers fish and seafood.

All three run their procedures through the foreign-trade single window, VUCE. The resolution number issued there (the documento resolutivo) is entered on the customs declaration (DAM), so customs will not release a regulated food without it.

The registro sanitario.

Processed food needs a registro sanitario before it can be imported and sold. It is granted per product, or per group of products sharing the same basic ingredients and additives, and per manufacturer, and is valid for five years, renewable. The holder (titular) is legally responsible for the sanitary quality and safety of what it releases to the market — which is why the registration is held by a Peruvian company with a tax number (RUC), normally the importer or the brand’s local subsidiary.

The file is a sworn declaration filed through VUCE (procedure DGS005 for a foreign product), with physico-chemical and microbiological analyses of the finished product from the factory’s own laboratory or an accredited one, the list of ingredients and additives with their international numbers, packaging material, shelf life, storage conditions and lot coding. Foreign documents such as a certificate of free sale are generally expected to be recent; check the current list with DIGESA before collecting papers abroad. The fee shown on the government portal gob.pe for registration or re-registration is S/390 per file, paid with a bank payment code generated for the VUCE application.

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  Own registration

  The importer holds the registro sanitario and can import under it for its full five-year term.

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  Using someone else’s registration

  An importer that is not the holder can obtain a certificate to import a product already registered by another company (procedure DGS003). That certificate covers one import only.

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  Changes

  New presentations or label changes go through a modification procedure (DGS008).

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  After the grant

  DIGESA now inspects companies right after a new or renewed registration and has suspended registrations where the manufacturer lacked hygiene (PGH) or HACCP certification.

Law and practice: Supreme Decree 007-98-SA (food surveillance regulation), arts. 58–58-B as amended by Supreme Decree 004-2014-SA; DIGESA Communiqué 010-2025 (13 November 2025); VUCE procedures DGS005, DGS003 and DGS008.

Plant and animal health.

For fresh produce, grains, seeds and other plant products, SENASA issues a permiso fitosanitario de importación (PFI). It must be in hand before the goods ship. If SENASA has already set phytosanitary requirements for that product and that country, the permit is a formality; if it has not, SENASA first runs a pest risk analysis, which can take months. The exporting country’s plant protection service must issue a phytosanitary certificate that meets the permit’s conditions, and SENASA inspects the shipment on arrival, with power to sample, quarantine, re-export or destroy.

For meat, dairy, eggs, honey and other animal products, SENASA issues a permiso sanitario de importación — often called the zoosanitary permit — but only for products and countries with approved sanitary requirements. For meat, the exporting plant must also be approved, usually after an audit of the exporting country’s veterinary service. Without approved requirements there is no permit, whatever the price.

Law and practice: VUCE manual SNS002 (SENASA import sanitary permit); Legislative Decree 1062 (food safety law) and SENASA’s TUPA for fees.

Spanish, registration number and black warnings.

Mandatory label information must be in Spanish: product name, net content, ingredients and additives, manufacturer and country of origin, the importer’s name, address and RUC, the registro sanitario number, lot code, expiry and storage conditions. The importer’s details and the registration number may go on a supplementary label applied in Peru. The reference standard for packaged food is NTP 209.038.

On top of that, Law 30021 (the healthy-eating law) requires front-of-pack advertencias publicitarias: black octagons reading “ALTO EN AZÚCAR”, “ALTO EN SODIO”, “ALTO EN GRASAS SATURADAS” or “CONTIENE GRASAS TRANS”, with “Evitar su consumo excesivo”, when a processed food or non-alcoholic drink exceeds the thresholds in the Ministry of Health’s warnings manual. The octagons must be printed or applied so that they do not cover other mandatory information. Peruvian law has allowed adhesive octagons for importers in transition periods and, under Law 31919, for micro and small enterprises; larger importers should plan for printed packaging.

The rules are tightening. In October 2025 Congress’s consumer-protection committee approved a bill to remove the de facto exemption for very small packs (front label under 20 cm²), so that single-serve snacks, sweets and drinks also carry warnings. Check its status before designing small-format packaging for Peru.

Law and practice: Law 30021 and its regulation and warnings manual (Ministry of Health); Law 31919 (November 2023); Legislative Decree 1304 (labelling of industrial products); NTP 209.038 (packaged food labelling).

Mostly 0% and 6%, with a few peaks.

Peru’s tariff has only three rates. In food, most fresh produce, dairy and cereals are at 0%, most prepared and packaged food at 6%, and a small number of lines — beef, beef preparations, sweetened frozen fruit and some chocolate — at 11%. Sugar, rice, maize and dairy are also covered by Peru’s price-band system (franja de precios), which can add or subtract a variable duty depending on international reference prices. With a preference under a trade agreement, most of these lines fall to zero, although price-band products are often treated differently; check the line before quoting.

There is no excise (ISC) on ordinary food. Sweetened non-alcoholic drinks are the exception: they pay ISC by sugar content, which belongs in a separate drinks calculation.

Law and practice: Arancel de Aduanas 2022 (Supreme Decree 404-2021-EF), tariff rates by chapter as published by SUNAT.

ACE 58, sanitary access and what actually ships.

Paraguayan food enters Peru under ACE 58, the Mercosur–Peru agreement, usually at 0% with a certificate of origin. The tariff is rarely the obstacle; sanitary access is. Peru’s SENASA audited Paraguay’s veterinary service, SENACSA, in September 2025 as part of opening Peru to Paraguayan pork and approving a beef plant for export to Peru; the audit closed with a favourable assessment and a final report to follow. Until requirements and plants are approved, animal products cannot enter however competitive the price.

What Paraguay actually ships to Peru is mostly feed and oils. In 2025, according to UN Comtrade data, the largest items were food-industry residues and animal feed (about US$47 million, essentially soybean meal), animal and vegetable fats and oils (about US$16 million) and oilseeds (about US$10 million). Meat was about US$3 million and cereals about US$3 million. Packaged consumer food is a small line and a real opportunity for Paraguayan brands that are willing to build a DIGESA file and an octagon-compliant label.

Law and practice: ACE 58 (Mercosur–Peru); La Nación, Asunción, 23 September 2025; UN Comtrade data via Trading Economics (Paraguay exports to Peru, 2025).

Packaged food, CIF US$100,000.

For a registered, compliant importer, IGV, IPM and the prepayment are credits, not costs; the only true border cost is the duty. For a first import the prepayment is 10% instead of 3.5%, so cash at clearance rises by about US$8,500 in both columns. Add the sanitary costs — laboratory analyses, the DIGESA fee, labelling changes — which for a new brand often exceed the duty saved under ACE 58.

Law and practice: Illustrative; no price-band duty or excise. IGV and IPM base: CIF + duty. Prepayment base: CIF + all taxes.

Before the first shipment.

Where these rules come from.

VUCE — chain of procedures to import food · VUCE — SENASA animal-product import permit (SNS002) · gob.pe — DIGESA registro sanitario of food (requirements and fee) · DIGESA Communiqué 010-2025 · SUNAT — Arancel de Aduanas 2022 · Congress of Peru — octagon bill, October 2025 · LP Derecho — Law 31919 (stickers for small firms) · INV Argentina — Peru country report · La Nación (Paraguay) — SENASA audit, September 2025 · Trading Economics — Paraguay exports to Peru (UN Comtrade)

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