Kabul, Sep 2 - The opium production in Afghanistan is down by 10 percent while the area under poppy cultivation in the country fell 22 percent in 2009, a new UN report said Wednesday.

However, the war-torn Afghanistan still remains the world's largest supplier of the drug, producing 6,900 tonnes of opium, from which heroin is derived, the Online news agency said citing the report.

'World demand for opium remains stable (at around 5,000 tonnes per year), which is several thousand tonnes lower than what Afghanistan produces every year,' a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), released in Kabul Wednesday said.

It said production had not fallen 'dramatically' because the opium yield this year increased by 15 percent per hectare.

The decline was also seen in the southern province of Helmand, the largest opium producing province in the country and where Taliban militants are most active. The province grew two-thirds of the national total last year.

'This year, the most significant decrease comes in Helmand province where cultivation declined by a third, from 103,590 hectares in 2008 to 69,833,' the report said.

'At a time of pessimism about the situation in Afghanistan, these results are a welcome piece of good news and demonstrate that progress is possible,' UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said.

The UN report attributed the decline in production 'to more robust counter-narcotics operations by Afghan and NATO forces' and efforts of a small number of governors. It also boasted that the number of opium-free provinces had risen from 18 to 20, of the country's 34 provinces.

The NATO-led forces together with US-led coalition forces have more than 100,000 soldiers in the country, but they had stayed away from dealing with the drug problem until last year. The alliance decided to target the drug barons and their labs after more evidence emerged that the militants fund their insurgency partly by drug money.