Timber

Timber concessions

From Sinar Pagi

Recently the BPTG was again the focus of the public's attention. Earlier this year, the company created an uproar by listing its HPH forest concession areas as company assets. It also raised a public controversy by using civil servant insurance saving funds for its speculative objectives. And, even though the company's reputation was tarnished when it was fined Rp 1.2 billion by the government, it still managed to obtain a capital market management board (Bapepam) license to go public and thereby collect funds from the public through the capital market.

Findings made by the environmentalist non-government organization SKEPHI indicate that BPTG's big name and the known acreage of its concessions (5 million hectares) are actually incompatible with the existing facts. Many of BPTG's subsidiary companies were bought earlier from unsound concessionaires. Some have expired and one has quietly turned into a coal mining company. Thirty BPTG subsidiaries no longer engage in logging because they have depleted all their reserves.

SKEPHI believes that the Forestry Minister's demand for only 49 percent of the shares from BPTG's daughter companies is unfair. The Minister of Forestry has so far revoked the operating licenses of 255 forestry companies existing under similar conditions to those experienced by BPTG's daughter companies.

We demand that the Ministry remain impartial in its effort to promote a management system to ensure the sustainability of our forests. It would be proper not to allow BPTG any more HPH forest concession rights. BPTG's efforts to get around the regulations set by the Ministry of Forestry, which require that HPH concession holders have forestry companies, have resulted in a debacle.

S. INDRO TJAHJONO/SKEPHI

Jakarta