BOLIVIA-MORALES/COCA GROWERS Bolivia's Evo Morales touts plan to tax coca farmers for their crop

Record ID: 151437

  • Title: BOLIVIA-MORALES/COCA GROWERS Bolivia's Evo Morales touts plan to tax coca farmers for their crop
  • Date: 16th June 2015
  • Summary: LA PAZ, BOLIVIA (JUNE 16, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PALACIO QUEMADO "BURNT PALACE" GOVERNMENT PALACE WITH FLAGS OUTSIDE (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) BOLIVIA PRESIDENT EVO MORALES, SAYING: "I just want to say to everyone that we have to pay our taxes because paying our taxes helps us economically. Now we are respected in the world, maybe not the whole world but we are recognised
  • Embargoed: 1st July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAB7GFMB9VHU3QUVY09A02N8GNQ
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Bolivia's indigenous President Evo Morales touted a plan to tax the production of coca leaves on Tuesday (June 16), couching the move as a means to redistribute funds to the country's needy.
    Morales, himself a former coca farmer, has long talked up the country's "ancestral rite" to produce the leaf more commonly known as the raw material for cocaine. The plant itself is also used by many South Americans for tea and something to chew on as a custom without harm as well as to try and stave off altitude sickness.
    Its infamy grew in 1961 when the UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs banned the coca leaf along with cocaine, heroin, opium and morphine.
    But in regions like the Yungas and Cochabamba, some 23,000 hectares (56, 834 acres) of land is legally used to cultivate and sell the coca leaf, according to the United Nations.
    And now Morales' administration wants a cut from coca sales. It is currently working out the details of a new bill that would, for the first time, oblige all of the country's coca farmers, both legal and illegal, to pay taxes.
    "I just want to say to everyone that we have to pay our taxes because paying our taxes helps us economically. Now we are respected in the world, maybe not the whole world but we are recognised and respected that's the truth and that surprises me. And the money that you pay is returned to the people, that money is distributed and is not exported or given to the private sector, but is for the people," said Morales.
    Brigidia Quiroga Ramos, secretary of the Coca Leaf Commission and a member of Morales's Movement for Socialism party, championed the regular consumption of coca leaf.
    "People in Europe still think that our coca leaf is cocaine and we must refute this. Coca is not what most people think. Just as we have done with our quinoa, we want people to know the nutritional value, medicinal value that it [coca leaf] has and we can encourage the current producers to pursue organic and ecological production," said Ramos.
    Last year, a joint survey by the United Nations and Bolivia cited eradication efforts on illegal crops by the government for the decline in the cultivation of the leaf used to make cocaine - estimated to have fallen last year to 9 percent, the lowest level since 2002.
    Jimena Costas, a lawmaker and member of the Coca Leaf Committee, said a way to protect traditional and legal coca growers in special designated areas of the country was to introduce a tax to regular the industry and guarantee its status.
    "I think one way to maintain the legality of the Yungas area as one which produces coca for chewing, including in the Chapare Cochabambino area, is to develop a reasonable tax that does not significantly affect the hip pockets of producers but which guarantees that this tax will maintain its legal status," said Costas.
    Bolivia is reportedly the world's third biggest cocaine producer after Peru and Colombia.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register