Govt drops plan to raise logging quota this year

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Ministry of Forestry has decided to drop its plan to raise its logging quota this year after discovering that unscrupulous timber companies were deliberately misreporting their demand.

Minister of Forestry Malam Sambat Kaban told The Jakarta Post recently that a comprehensive and reliable audit was needed since businesspeople, who had legal concessions, were not being honest about their exact demand of timber and the capacity of their plants.

"There is an attempt from (the companies) to 'legally' rake increase their concession area and plant capacity by overstating the actual domestic demand and then selling the excess wood illegally overseas," he said.

Kaban said the audit would be conducted soon on the ground in each of the registered companies by officials from the forestry ministry and independent auditors.

The audit, which is expected to be completed before the end of the year, may also help ensure the exact availability of timber from the country's sustainable production forests and plantation industry.

The ministry had planned to increase its logging quota from 5.45 million cubic meters to up to 30 million cubic meter this year to meet domestic demand and help create employment.

The ministry argued that reducing the logging quota was not the answer to curbing the illegal logging, because the low quota has prompted most forestry-based companies to seek illegal timber so they could sell overseas.

At present, the timber processing industry has an estimated capacity of about 42 million cubic meters per year, but the industry is flooded with illegal timber from already depleted natural forests.

The great discrepancy between the demand and the available logging quota has been cited as a key contributor to widespread illegal logging across the country since former President Soeharto provided privileges for businessmen willing to utilize the country's forestry resources in early 1970s.

According to Kaban, their decisions on a logging quota are based on demand, as reported by number of forestry based industry associations. But the demand cannot be verified by his ministry because it was not a result of an audit, but a mere estimate.

"I don't want to risk the sustainability of our forests because of unreliable data. We have problems dealing with rampant illegal logging and I don't want to exacerbate it by allowing the forest concession groups to consume more timber from our forests too," he said.

To cope with shortages in the legal timber supply, the ministry has urged the industry to lower their collective reserve capacity and to import logs or procure them from industrial plantations.

The quota decrease was apparently decided upon as part of the previous government's efforts to protect Indonesia's rapidly diminishing natural forests.