(Q24N) Bolivian Minister of Development Planning, Mariana Prado, informed here that representatives of the enterprise Vino Mariani of Italy, are interested in elaborating their products using Bolivian coca leaf.
Prado declared to local media that in a meeting of that enterprise with president Evo Morales in Rome, commented the possibility of producing the wine in the Andean nation.
It was an important meeting, the Head of State learned about the processes of industrialization of the coca leaf, said the minister.
The Mariani started elaborating that beverage in 1863.
The then denominated Vin Mariani was a beverage containing wine and extracts of coca leaf, which had great popularity among European artists and intellectuals of that time.
Morales traveled recently to the Italian capital to meet the director general of the Organization of the United Nations for Food and Agriculture (FAO), Jose Graziano da Silva, who committed to contribute together with Bolivia to obtain financing for projects of irrigation and water generation.
The agreement includes US$250 million dollars to present to the Green Fund, mechanism created in 2010 at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to aid developing countries.
Such organism will also help with providing expert consultancy to face the locust plague that presently ravages crops in Bolivia.
Source Prensa Latina
