©Reuters

Supporters of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski celebrate in Lima after the economist won the race to become Peru’s new president

Just hours after beating Keiko Fujimori to win Peru’s most closely fought presidential contest in more than 50 years, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is back at home taking congratulatory calls from Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos and Mauricio Macri of Argentina.

With his party holding just 18 seats in the 130-member congress compared with 73 for Ms Fujimori, daughter of a jailed former president, Peru’s new leader needs all the support he can get.

“It feels good [to win] but I have to sort out a few problems,” the former World Bank economist told the Financial Times from the office of his elegant home, surrounded by paintings from the Andean Cusco school.

“The first is to get some sort of agreement, both with the left and with the Fujimoristas, so I can get a basic legislative programme going. We have a very clear idea of what it should be but we need to get a consensus.”

That will be easier said than done. The legacy of Alberto Fujimori, president for a decade in the 1990s, continues to divide Peru, even as the former president serves a 25-year prison sentence for corruption and crimes against humanity.

Whether Ms Fujimori shared the autocratic tendencies of her father — who once deployed soldiers and tanks to shut down congress — was the dominant issue in the election.

Mr Kuczynski won by fewer than 50,000 ballots in a country of 18m voters. But most agree the real story was that his rival was defeated after a surge in the anti-Fujimori vote. At the time of interview, Ms Fujimori had yet to call Mr Kuczynski to congratulate him.

Still, in a move that could appeal to disgruntled Fujimoristas, Mr Kuczynski hints at a possible compromise over the 77-year old former president. “If Congress passes a law — not just for him — that says people of a certain age with certain sentences can complete their sentences at home, I will sign it,” he said.

Before that, there is the need to press ahead with economic reforms and a push to create what his team calls “popular capitalism”.

“The key thing now is to get a consensus around a very basic programme: small and medium enterprises, tax simplification, some tax reductions . . . and improve water access, health and education,” says the 77-year old Oxford and Princeton-educated polyglot, gently banging a copy of the FT on his desk.

His programme will be financed, he says, in part by raising debt: “I’m not saying we borrow all the way to paradise [but] I have enough of a reputation to let go the brake a little.”

The son of a Polish-German doctor who came to South America to work in a leper colony, and the cousin of film-maker Jean-Luc Godard, Mr Kuczynski was just 22 years old when he was hired by the World Bank.

He has worked on Wall Street and in the African mining industry, as an official at the IMF and in Peru’s central bank, and served terms as his country’s prime minister, mining and finance ministers. “I’m an investment banker, I’ve done very complicated projects,” he said.

With low mineral prices weighing on Peru’s copper-dependent economy, Mr Kuczynski is confident he can entice leading miners such as Rio Tinto and Anglo American, which already operate in Peru, to invest further.

“You have to talk to their boards and convince them they can actually make some money here,” he said. He also hopes to increase bank lending and boost investment in infrastructure.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the office of his home

Another goal is to almost double the number of workers in the formal economy. Alfredo Thorne, the banker who will be his finance minister, said formalising 50 per cent of the labour force would add 2 percentage points of growth to a country that is forecast by the IMF to grow 3.7 per cent this year and 4.1 per cent in 2017. Mr Kuczynski is aiming to lift that to 5 per cent by 2018.

On foreign policy the new president insists he will take a tough line on democratic abuses in socialist Venezuela, which is mired in political and economic crisis. “We have to take a very hard stance on Venezuela — we have to shun them,” he said.

“Things have changed in Latin America,” added the president, who by replacing leftwinger Ollanta Humala extends the region’s shift to the centre-right.

“We are moving to more market-oriented and more democratic economies. But a market-oriented economy will fail in Peru if you don’t give people water, education and basic things.”

To the critics who have said that just a few years shy of his 80th birthday he is too old for the job, Mr Kuczynski insists he has plenty of energy left.

“All my aunts lived till they were 98,” he said. “I still have another 21 years.”