Colombia's Cocaine Trade Now Outearns Its Oil Exports

Drug lords in Colombia are making more money from cocaine than the government is making from crude oil sales, a report from a Colombian university has found. At $16.5 billion for 2024, cocaine revenues surpassed oil export revenues, which stood at around $15 billion that year, UPI reported, citing the research from EAFIT University.

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Oil export revenues, however, remain Colombia's largest export revenue generator, the research showed. Together with coal exports, oil exceeds the illicit trade in cocaine. Still, cocaine revenues in 2024 were equal to 4.4% of Colombia's gross domestic product—because output surged.

"It is not that cocaine has become more expensive in the domestic market. On the contrary. What we are seeing is a massive increase in the volume of pure production," one of the authors of the research, economist Santiago Tobon, said. Oil production in the South American country, meanwhile, has been on a consistent decline.

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Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/colombias-cocaine-trade-now-outearns-220000411.html)