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