The regulation of our forests may not be as effective as the Commissioner thinks

Logs exports benefit the mostly Asian exporters and cripple the livelihood of those in the domestic wood processing sector
Thursday, November 23rd 2006
Stabroek News

Dear Editor,

I wish to respond to the position of the Forest Producers Association (FPA), as reported in your newspaper of 14 November 2006 that "stopping log exports would leave it with nothing to offer, not even logs for the local industries".

My understanding of the Govern-ment's stated policies on the award of large-scale concessions is that these are premised on downstream processing in-country. There is no mention of log exports in the award of Timber Sales Agreements (TSAs).

My question to the state and its regulatory agency, the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) is: why is the FPA being allowed to misrepresent the terms of TSA awards?

Currently an average of 15,000 cubic metres of prime hardwood logs are exported per month. At the same time, Guyanese lumber-dependent businesses are all down-sizing or have closed. In plain English: log exports benefit the (mostly Asian) exporter only while crippling livelihoods of Guyanese businesses and workers in the domestic wood processing sector.

Given the poor productivity of our forest resource, the stated forest policy aims to maximize the return on investment by maximizing the achievable yield from the forest in terms of log volume per hectare and lumber volume per log.

We hear ad nauseam about the contribution to the state by log exporters particularly the people they employ and the taxes they pay.

Let them 'put dey money where dey mouth deh' and provide the following information relating to each large-scale concession for the benefit of the public and the new Minister of Agriculture;

For the period 2001 - 2005:

Total size of logging concession held in hectares [acres]

Total logging production by the concessionaire

Total logging production when sub-contracted to the Asians

Total employees and PAYE / NIS paid

Taxes paid - Income and Corporation

Revenue foregone by the State - remission of customs duties and other taxes on imports

Total exports of logs by volume and value to be broken down by species

Total exports of other wood products by volume and value

These figures can then be tabulated, evaluated and compared with the figures from small Guyanese concessionaires who are presently working mainly in logged-over State Forest Permissions, none of which is supposed to exceed 20,000 acres.

The Guyanese public including our policy makers will then be in a better position to weigh the relative contributions to our economy of log exports versus domestic processing of lumber.

Yours faithfully,

Howard Bulkan