UNODC to release report on Bolivian coca crop next week

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is set to present its latest report on Bolivia's coca crop next week, a top Bolivian official said on Sunday.

Bolivia's Deputy Minister of Social Defense and Controlled Substances, Felipe Caceres, said "the UNDOC will officially present the 2015 Monitoring Report on Coca Crops" at an event to be attended by government officials on Tuesday.

"The document provides information on the quantification of the extension of coca farming in regions being monitored," including parts of the departments of La Paz and Cochabamba, the official said.

In recent years, Bolivia has reduced and stabilized the number of hectares dedicated to coca farming to just over 20,000 hectares, according to the Bolivian News Agency (ABI).

In 2014, Bolivia registered the smallest area of coca cultivation since the UNDOC first began to monitor coca farming in 2003, the ABI said.

The reports have shown, "for the fourth year in a row, a net reduction in the surface area of coca cultivation," the official said.

Some 70 percent of the country's coca crop is grown in the region of Yungas de La Paz, 30 percent in Tropico de Cochabamba and less than one percent in Norte de La Paz.

The UNDOC regional representative in Bolivia, Antonino de Leo, has credited the drop in illegal coca farming to the government's policy of maintaining dialogue and building consensus with coca growers, ABI said.

However, the results of the UN reports have varied significantly with similar studies by the United States.

According to the Andean Information Network, a UNDOC study for 2009 "contrasted sharply" with a U.S. report in 2010, with the UN registering a one percent increase in coca cultivation, while the U.S. reported a more than 9 percent rise. Enditem