If I had to guess, it'd be the "perl" part that is taking so much time. Perl is not noted for it's efficient use of time or memory. For little things, you'd never notice, but for larger things or things that need to do many jobs quickly, it adds up.

Try cutting down the number of imported modules.

Don't bother with perlcc. If it works at all you'll end up with an executable multiple megabytes in size.