Wood exports projected to increase to $10 billion
Wood exports projected to increase to $10 billion
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Forestry Djamaludin Suryohadikusumo
is optimistic that annual exports of wood products can net at
least US$10 billion in the next 10 years without having to rely
on plywood.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Daijiro Hashimoto,
the governor of Japan's Kochi province, the minister said that
importer countries, such as Japan, would have to adjust in the
future to Indonesia's changing forest conditions and sustainable
development policy, which may call for cutbacks in the timber
supply used for plywood production.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Indonesia's
exports of wood products declined to $5.19 billion in 1994 from
$5.5 billion in 1993. Of last year's revenues from wood exports,
$3.71 billion came from the sale of plywood, $509.6 million from
sawn timber and $964.5 from other wood products.
Djamaludin said that, in the future, earnings are expected to
come mainly from medium-density fiber (MDF) boards and laminated
vinyl lumber (LVL) boards.
"Over the next 10 to 25 years, the sizes of large timber areas
will decrease and many of them will be used mainly as protected
forests and national parks," he said.
Panel boards would no longer be made from large trees but from
smaller, faster-growing types of trees cultivated by
concessionaires, which would first be made into pulp before being
processed into boards, he said.
Impact
Djamaludin said he was optimistic that the substitution of
plywood by other forms of wood panels would not have a negative
impact on exports, which he predicted would continue to grow.
Indonesia, which currently produces 10 million cubic meters of
plywood per year, supplies about 80 percent of the world plywood
market.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, exports from
wood products, which mostly consist of plywood, currently account
for 13 percent of Indonesia's overall annual export earnings.
Plywood export prices, which were recorded in February as
ranging between $370 and $1,200 per cubic meter, reached an
average of $474 in 1993 but dropped to $457 in 1994.
Revenues from plywood exports also dropped by nearly 12
percent from $4.22 billion in 1993 to $3.71 billion last year.
While the Indonesian Forestry Society (MPI) blames the export
decline on the economic recession of importer countries -- which
also include South Korea and the United States -- a number of
analysts and buyers consider it to be due to the trade policies
practiced by the Indonesian Association of Wood Panel Producers
(Apkindo).
Apkindo officials have denied this.
Under current regulations, all international transactions
involving Indonesian plywood must be conducted through Apkindo,
its trading arms and its appointed distributors.
Despite Djamaludin's statement, Apkindo chairman Mohamad Hasan
insisted yesterday that plywood would continue to play a major
role in exports in the future because, he said, plywood and MDF
were incomparable materials.
During a separate meeting with Governor Hashimoto later
yesterday, Hasan said that Indonesia's timber production could
still be increased. "It is even possible to make (timber)
planting more rapid than felling," he said.
The MPI, also chaired by Hasan, predicted earlier this year
that plywood export prices would climb again after exporters
recovered from an economic recession and could reach a record
high of $8 billion this year.(pwn)