BOGOTA, June 11 (Reuter) Colombia's drug trade is thriving despite a
crackdown on billionaire cocaine merchants, the head of a respected economic
think tank said on Wednesday.

``Drug trafficking continues to be a business of appreciable size,'' Mauricio
Cardenas, director of a private organisation known as Fedesarrollo, told a
news conference.

He estimated that about $2.5 billion from illicit drug sales was being
funnelled back into Colombia every year, an amount equal to annual income
from coffee sales and representing about 20 percent of the country's total
exports.

Most of the drug money returns in the form of contraband goods, he said,
noting that the booming trade in contraband had caused a sharp slowdown in
Colombia's industrial sector.

Cardenas gave no estimate of the total value of Colombia's illicit drug sales
per year. Government officials led by President Ernesto Samper say the lion's
share of the income remains in the United States and other rich countries.

All of Colombia's billionaire drug lords have either been killed or
imprisoned since 1995. But U.S. officials maintain that the leaders of the
notorious Cali cartel still run their empire from Bogota's La Picota prison.