Overview: Economic development has slowed gradually since 1986, but growth rates remain high by Latin American standards. Conservative economic policies have kept inflation and unemployment near 30% and 10%, respectively. The rapid development of oil, coal, and other nontraditional industries in recent years has helped to offset the decline in coffee prices - Colombia's major export. The collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in the summer of 1989, a troublesome rural insurgency, energy rationing, and drug-related violence have dampened growth. The level of violence, in Bogota in particular, surged to higher levels in the first quarter of 1993, further delaying the economic resurgence expected from government reforms. These reforms center on fiscal restraint, trade and investment liberalization, financial and labor reform, and privatization of state utilities and commercial banks.

National product: GDP - exchange rate conversion - $51 billion (1992 est.)

National product real growth rate: 3.3% (1992 est.)

National product per capita: $1,500 (1992 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 25% (1992)

Unemployment rate: 10% (1992)

Budget: revenues $5.0 billion; current expenditures $5.1 billion, capital expenditures $964 million (1991 est.)

External debt: $17 billion (1992)

Industrial production: growth rate -0.5% (1991); accounts for 20% of GDP

Electricity: 10,193,000 kW capacity; 36,000 million kWh produced, 1,050 kWh per capita (1992)

Industries: textiles, food processing, oil, clothing and footwear, beverages, chemicals, metal products, cement; mining - gold, coal, emeralds, iron, nickel, silver, salt

Agriculture: growth rate 3% (1991 est.) accounts for 22% of GDP; crops make up two-thirds and livestock one-third of agricultural output; climate and soils permit a wide variety of crops, such as coffee, rice, tobacco, corn, sugarcane, cocoa beans, oilseeds, vegetables; forest products and shrimp farming are becoming more important

Illicit drugs: illicit producer of cannabis, coca, and opium; about 37,500 hectares of coca under cultivation; the world's largest processor of coca derivatives into cocaine; supplier of cocaine to the US and other international drug markets

Economic aid: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $1.6 billion; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments (1970-89), $3.3 billion, Communist countries (1970-89), $399 million

Currency: 1 Colombian peso (Col$)=100 centavos

Exchange rates: Colombian pesos (Col$) per US$1 - 820.08 (January 1993), 759.28 (1992), 633.05 (1991), 502.26 (1990), 382.57 (1989), 299.17 (1988)

Fiscal year: calendar year