Colombia's coca production soars

Published on 18/06/2008 22:04

COLOMBIA'S coca crop – the basis for cocaine – increased by 27 per cent last year, the United Nations reported yesterday.

Eradication of the crop in Colombia, the world's No 1 cocaine-producing nation, has been the cornerstone of a multi-billion-dollar US aid package.

Coca cultivation was also up 4 per cent in Peru and 5 per cent in Bolivia, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported in its annual survey.

It estimated cocaine production in the Andean region was stable, however, at about 994 tonnes compared with 984 tonnes in 2006.

Colombian cocaine production failed to keep pace with coca planting because police pressure forced an interruption in the growing cycle, General Oscar Naranjo, the chief of Colombia's police, said.

"These young crops, the new ones, are less productive," Mr Naranjo told a press conference in Bogot. He said eradication programmes are pushing coca farmers to more remote areas where it is harder to obtain the chemicals needed to make cocaine.

"The increase in coca cultivation in Colombia is a surprise and shock: a surprise because it comes at a time when the Colombian government is trying so hard to eradicate coca; a shock because of the magnitude of cultivation," the UNODC's executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, said.

He noted, however, that almost half of Colombia's coca comes from just ten of its 195 municipalities.

He said: "Just like in Afghanistan, where most opium is grown in provinces with a heavy Taleban presence, in Colombia most coca is grown in areas controlled by insurgents."

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