Peru Will Be No. 1 Coca Producer by 2011, Experts Say

From Latin American Herald Tribune:

LIMA – Peru could displace Colombia in 2011 as the world’s biggest producer of coca, the raw material of cocaine, according to experts quoted Monday by La Republica newspaper.

In “2011 or 2012 Peru very probably should come to be the No. 1 producer of cocaine in the world, as occurred in the 1980s,” analyst Jaime Garcia Diaz told the paper.

In that decade, the amount of territory in Peru on which coca leaf was being grown was about 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres). In 2005, about 48,200 hectares were used to grow coca and in 2008 56,100 hectares, and at present the country is the world’s second largest producer of coca, according to the United Nations.

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My Comment: With this growth in Peru's drug trade, there will be a corresponding growth in insurgent groups like the Shining Path.