once was dependent on coffee as its principal cash crop, but has successfully diversified since a decline in international coffee prices in the late 1980s. Its mining sector contributes significantly to the economy, with large deposits of fossil fuels, precious metals, and emeralds, of which Colombia supplies about one-half the world supply. The central government budget included revenues of $11.2 billion (1994) and expenditures of $7.3 billion (1993). The gross domestic product (GDP) in 1996 was $85.2 billion, or about $2280 per capita. Not included in these official statistics is the economic impact of coca cultivation and the illegal cocaine trade, reportedly with profits worth $300 million annually in the early 1990s.AAgriculture Coffee is Colombia's principal crop. Although Colombia is second only to Brazil in the annual volume of coffee produced and is the world's leading producer of mild coffee, the crop was bypassed by petroleum in the mid-1990s as the country's largest source of foreign income. In the mid-1970s coffee accounted for 80 percent of Colombia's export earnings; by 1995 coffee only brought in 25 percent of the nation's export earnings. High production costs, low international prices, and a worm that destroys coffee beans all combined to drastically reduce the earnings of Colombian coffee growers in the early 1990s. Coffee is cultivated chiefly on mountain slopes between about 900 and 1800 m (about 3000 and 6000 ft) above sea level, principally in the departments of Caldas, Antioquia, Cundinamarca, Norte de Santander, Tolima, and Santander. More than 150,000 coffee plantations, chiefly small, extend over approximately 1 million hectares (approximately 2.5 million acres). Coffee output totaled 696,200 metric tons in 1997, with most of the exported coffee going to the United States.While coffee is Colombia's leading agricultural product, the country's diverse climate and topography permits cultivation of a wide variety ...
