Illegal logging driving legal loggers to bankruptcy: timber chiefs
Copyright 2001 Agence France Presse
September 13, 2001
JAKARTA, Sept 13 - Legal timber companies in Indonesia face bankruptcy in six months unless the government gets serious in curbing illegal logging, a timber company executive has warned.
"If the government takes no action against illegal loggers we predict that in six months all legal timber companies will go bankrupt," Nana Suparna of the Association of Indonesian Forestry Entrepreneurs, was quoted by Thursday's Jakarta Post as saying.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Bali on forest law enforcement and governance. It is attended by ministers from East Asia plus representatives from some African and Latin American countries. Suparna said illegal loggers had flooded the timber market with cheap logs, sending many legal companies bankrupt.
"Legal timber companies spend 3.2 million rupiah (353 dollars) in processing two cubic meters of raw logs into one cubic meter of plywood," he was quoted as saying.
"In order to gain a 15 percent profit, we would have to sell plywood in the international market at around 400 dollars per cubic meter."
Illegal timber companies however spend less on production because they are using illegal logs, and are able to sell their products at cheaper prices than legal companies.
Suparna said several furniture companies in West Java were importing wood from Singapore, to where it is smuggled by illegal Indonesian loggers, because it is cheaper than wood produced legally in Indonesia's Kalimantan or Sumatra.
"They do not buy materials from legal domestic timber companies since the price is too high for them," he said.
However he rejected a proposal by local environmental watchdogs for a moratorium on logging to stop the illegal trade, saying it would deal a devastating blow to the timber industry and fail to stop the trade.
"Right now illegal loggers keep felling trees in national parks and conserved forests all across the country despite knowing that it is prohibited. I believe that they will continue doing so even if a moratorium is implemented," Suparna said.
He also questioned who would take responsibility for the 20 million lives that depend, directly and indirectly, on the timber industry.
Several environmental groups have been urging the government to immediately implement a moratoriumon on all industrial-scale tree-felling activity.
Private watchdog Telepak, based in Bogor in West Java, estimates that illegal logging is destroying at least 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of Indonesia's tropical forest each year.
"The international trade in illegal logs is really out of control. We have witnessed the ruining of Indonesian forests by illegal logging encouraged by the international market," Telapak spokesman Hapsoro said Tuesday.
He said Telapak estimates that more than 70 percent of the timber circulating in Indonesia comes from illegal logging.
The group's monitors say they have also seen Indonesian illegally-felled logs and timber smuggled to Malaysia from where they are processed for export to the US, Japan, Europe and China.