Indonesia to reduce timber output

JAKARTA (JP): The government announced a plan yesterday to reduce Indonesia's timber output by almost 30 percent over the next five years. They also disclosed penalties on 248 forest concessionaires for logging violations.

Minister of Forestry Djamaloedin Soeryohadikoesoemo told a meeting on investment coordination that Indonesia will reduce its annual timber output from 31.4 million cubic meters in the past five years to 22.5 million cubic meters in the coming five.

He said Indonesia's goal of reducing its timber output was to preserve its rainforests from over-exploitation.

Djamaloedin said Indonesia has to be alert about the future of forest management because, according to a report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) last May, Indonesia has only 86.4 million hectares of closed forests and 25 million hectares of virgin forests left.

Reduction of forests has caused floods in several areas during the rainy seasons and caused drought in certain areas during the dry seasons.

This year's severe dry season has damaged crops in Java and is projected to cause a 2.7 percent decrease in the country's output of rice, its staple food. The decrease has caused rice shortages in the market place, which automatically increases prices.

Djamaloedin said there is no requirement for new investment in logging concession industries in Indonesia because it has enough already. The management of concessions whose licenses have expired will be shifted to state-owned companies.

Violation

Meanwhile, in a written statement for the opening ceremony of a three-day accounting management training in Bogor, West Java, Djamaloedin said that 248 concessionaires have violated logging regulations and will have to pay a total of Rp 45.34 billion (US$21 million) in fines for 521 cases of forest over- exploitation.

The minister, who was scheduled to open the training program for chief commissioners and presidents of industrial forest plantation holders and concession joint ventures, did not specify what types of exploitation cases the concessionaires were involved in. However, an official from the Ministry of Forestry said that they might have been involved in one of the three types of violations.

The official said the three types of violations include one on yearly working plans, another on the felling of more trees than licensed and the third on the felling of trees other than the species permitted.

Djamaloedin said his ministry will also send letters of first- degree warning to 468 concessionaires, of second-degree warning to 211 others and of third-degree warning to other 63 concessionaires.

The minister said Indonesia has produced 238.60 million cubic meters of logs since the logging concession system began in the early 1970s.

"The logging concession system has given total incomes of Rp 5.5 trillion ($2.54 billion) in addition to foreign exchange earnings of US$26 billion," Djamaloedin said. He added that the forestry industry has been Indonesia's second largest source of foreign exchange revenues after oil and gas for the last two decades.

Indonesia last year earned $4.5 billion from forestry-based exports, of which almost 75 percent was contributed by plywood. (02)