Bolivia: Cocaine Represents Up to 3 pc of GDP

Echoing a statistic published three months ago by the UNODC, Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera said that between 1.5 and 3 percent of the country's total GDP consists of drug money. According to La Razon, Garcia said drug trafficking profits was not responsible for the slight boost seen last year in Bolivia's federal reserves, although the drug trade may have injected between $300 and $500 million into the economy. Last June, the UNDOC pegged the figure at $500 million in its annual report. Obviously these numbers (as with any statistics related to drug-trafficking) are at best rough estimates. Still, an assessment released by the White House on September 15 included Bolivia, along with Costa Rica and Nicaragua, on its list of the top 20 countries in the world for drug production and trafficking. This has once again fanned the fires within Bolivia, which ejected the DEA from within its borders in 2008 and since then has been regularly labeled as "uncooperative" by the U.S. State Department, with regard to the drugs war.