Afghanistan's dependence on opium fell last year but still stands at 10 percent of gross domestic product, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said Monday. The value of opium products exported from the country was an estimated 1.9 billion dollars, not taking into account the value of drug-making chemicals. In 2011, opium exports accounted for 15 percent of GDP, but that dropped to 10 percent last year as production was hit by bad weather and a plant disease, the UN agency said.

Afghanistan is the largest opium producer, with about 90 percent of the opiates of the world coming from the war-torn nation, despite a decade of eradication programmes and international funds to attract farmers to cultivate other cash crops. UNODC's annual survey comes a year before the planned pull-out by Nato forces from Afghanistan. "The problem of Afghan's opiates will not be solved in the short term, but we do need to accelerate the process, especially as 2014 is fast approaching," the agency's executive director, Yury Fedotov, said. The report pointed to the link between opium growing and a lack of development. Opium-growing villages are located farther from market towns and have fewer schools than villages that grow other crops, it said.

In April, UNODC said Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation was heading for a third consecutive year of increase and a possible record crop amid high opium prices. The agency reiterated Wednesday that the acreage of poppy fields increased by 18 percent to 154,000 hectares last year, while the harvest decreased by 36 percent to 3,700 tons.

Copyright Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 2013