Firm action against illegal loggers sought

Firm action against illegal loggers sought

SANUR, Bali (JP): An executive of the timber-processing
industry urged the government here on Wednesday to immediately
take firm measures against illegal logging.

"If the government doesn't take any action against the illegal
loggers, all the wood-processing companies in the country could
go bankrupt within the next six months," Nana Suparna of the
Association of Indonesian Forest Concessionaires (APHI),
said on the sidelines of the East Asia Regional Ministerial
Conference on Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (FLEG).

Suparna revealed that illegal logging operators, mostly in the
form of small-scale sawmills, had flooded the market with cheap
logs, thereby badly affecting the market share of the legal
operators.

"To produce one cubic meters of plywood, for example, the
legal timber producer is forced to spend at least Rp 3.2 million
(US$347.8) for various purposes, including taxes, workers' wages
and reforestation fees," he said.

"So, in order to gain a 15 percent profit, we would have to
sell the plywood at $400 per cubic meter on the international
market."

By contrast, there was no need for the illegal loggers to
spend such large sums of money with the result that they were
able to sell their products at much cheaper prices, Suparna said.

By comparison, a cubic meter of plywood sold for $250 on the
international market, he said, adding, "that's why many legal
timber-processing companies have gone bankrupt over the last
couple of years."

Suparna further disclosed the irony of how several furniture
firms in Purwakarta, West Java, were importing timber products
from Singapore instead of buying them from Kalimantan or Sumatra,
because the products from Singapore were very cheap.

"Singapore doesn't have any forests, does it? Our illegal
loggers smuggle the logs there and later our factories buy them
from that country.

"They could not afford to buy materials from the domestic,
legal timber industry since they are too expensive for them,"
Suparna said.

A similar concern was raised earlier by various non-
governmental organizations, which called for the immediate
imposition of a moratorium on all industrial-scale felling to
help protect existing forests in Indonesia

They argued that the moratorium would enable the government to
rehabilitate damaged forests and simultaneously restructure the
inefficient timber industry and trade.

"The government can reassign the workers from the plants to
the state-funded forest rehabilitation programs, or recruit them
as forest rangers. Those two options were successfully
implemented by the government of China during its moratorium
period," Longgena Ginting of the Indonesian Environment Forum
(Walhi) said.

However, Suparna did not agree with the NGOs' call as a
moratorium would deal a devastating blow to the legal timber
industry.

"I believe that the solution does not lie with what kind of
policy is to be implemented, but more with whether our government
is ready to enforce the law strongly and consistently," he said.

"Right now, the illegal loggers continue to fell trees in
restricted areas, including the national parks and conserved
forests, despite the prohibitions in place. I believe that they
will continue doing so even if a moratorium is being
implemented," he stated.

Suparna disclosed that currently there were around four
million people employed by firms in the legal timber industry.

"We are talking about 20 million souls depending, directly or
indirectly, on the timber industry. Who will be responsible for
providing them with alternative sources of incomes if the
moratorium policy is implemented. Not to mention that there are
already around 40 million unemployed people in this country
because of the economic crisis," he said. (zen)