Word: colombia
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Selling fine coffee to the world, Colombia takes in a golden torrent of foreign exchange-$300 million in the first eight months of this year. As a result, Colombia should be solvent, sound and stable. Instead, after two years of political mismanagement of its income, Colombia is setting off economic alarm bells both at home and abroad. It owes the tradesmen of the world around $345 million, and has become the No. 1 collection headache for U.S. exporters. The debt has sapped the nation's credit, its currency and its reserves. "The Colombian economy," said a U.S. Government official...
...Colombia's President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, unlike Perón, is bent on no zany program of economic change. He is a professional military officer thrown by the chance of a 1953 revolution into the strong-man leadership of the almost 13 million people of South America's third most populous country (after Brazil and Argentina). Preoccupied with the politics of staying in power, he failed to keep a sufficiently attentive eye on the economy. Now the figures add up to a mess (see chart...
Buying Spree. The mess is mainly the result of a reckless national buying spree. It began in mid-1954, when high coffee prices earned Colombia a record income. Then coffee prices fell. To curb the spree, the government put its faith in two major controls...
...Department of Agriculture tabulations put 1955-56 production at 50 million 132-lb. bags, 6,700,000 more than ever before. But the U.S. consumer insists that a goodly proportion (35%-40%) of flavorful "mild" coffee be blended with the staple Brazilian beans in the best brands. And Colombia is the No. 1 producer of the mild varieties...
Last December Department of Agriculture reporters estimated that Colombia's current crop would run to a record 6,500,000 bags for export. Czar Mejia, who keeps his figures secret, remained silent. But in succeeding months word some how drifted from Bogota to Manhattan's coffee-trading Front Street that torrential rains had cut deeply into Colombia's maturing crop. Roasters and brokers, caught with low inventories and suddenly aware that a shortage of mild beans for blending could be crippling, bid up the price from 63? to 80? a Ib. Colombia's mild coffee, which...