UN warns of opium production in Afghanistan
A dramatic rise in opium prices could cause more Afghan farmers to grow the illegal crop this year, thwarting efforts to stem the practice, the UN said today.
Despite a 48% drop in opium production in 2010, due mostly to a plant disease, the average price of dry opium at harvest time was US$169 (€125) per kilogram, up 164% from 2009, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in its new Afghanistan Opium Survey. A summary of the findings was released in September.
Yury Fedotov, executive director of the Vienna-based agency, stressed there was cause for concern.
"We cannot continue business as usual," he said. "If this cash bonanza lasts, it could effectively reverse the hard-won gains of recent years."
The average annual income from opium in opium-growing households increased 36% to $2,433 (€1,804) last year, up from $1,786 (€1,325), the survey said. The gross income per hectare of opium cultivated also rose 36%, to $4,900 (€3,634) from $3,600 (€2,670).
"This bonanza (for some) may provide farmers with a strong incentive to continue growing opium and even expand cultivation in 2011," it noted, adding that growing poppies was six times more profitable than growing wheat last year.
Afghanistan is the world's main producer of opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin. In 2010, it accounted for under 80% of global opium production, down from almost 90% a year earlier.
The survey also said the gross wholesale value of exported opium, morphine and heroin in neighbouring countries amounted to $1.4bn (€1.03bn), down 50% from $2.8bn (€2.07bn) in 2009 as cross-border prices remained stable.
"Like opium production, the gross export value of Afghan opiates was halved this year," Mr Fedotov and Afghan Counter-Narcotics Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbel Osmani wrote in the survey's preface.
"This indicates that the income of Afghan traffickers from the 2010 opium season is also down."
