Vietnam’s forest products exploitation, processing and exportation, particularly its wood processing, has enjoyed a fast growth but in an unsustainable manner. At the 2011 Forum on Vietnam Forestry (within frame of the First Vietnam Forest Products Festival) at Quy Nhon city, scientists, researchers and business leaders discussed together on solutions for the forest product processing and trade in integration with sustainable forest management.
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Binh Dinh Province Chairman Le Huu Loc visited some stalls at the fair-expo within frame the Festival. Photo: Van Luu
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* Great but unsustainable potentiality
The forum was co-organized by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Binh Dinh People’s Committee. More than 300 scientists, researchers, forest managers and representatives of local and foreign businesses participated the forum. Most of them agreed that Vietnam’s forest products exploitation, processing and exportation, particularly its wood processing, has been thriving, and becoming one of the most important industries of the country.
The forest products processing and export industry has aggressively changed and grown since 2000, said Mr. Vu Long, an economic and forest policy expert from Vietnam Forest Science Association. First of all, non-state businesses started to join the wood processing and trade. At the end of 2008, Vietnam had around 3,000 wood processing enterprises, a 3 time increase in comparison to 2000. At present, 96% of them are operating in private sector. The wood processing products have become varied in categories, rich in quantity and good in quality, satisfying not only domestic needs but also export demand with higher and higher export turnover. Vietnam’s forest product processing enterprises are manufacturing and exporting over 3,000 types of products, statistics by General Department of Vietnam Customs shown. The 2001 export turnover of wood products and wood chips was just US$ 334 million (at FOB price). In 2004, it reached over US$ 1.1 billion. The figures were US$ 2.8 billion and US$ 3.2 billion in respectively 2008 and 2010.
Vietnam’s wood products are now available at 120 countries all over the world, said Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hua Duc Nhi. The products have gained trust of the international customers. The wood product processing has been one of the top ten industries in term of high export turnover in Vietnam. The export-oriented forest products and wood processing has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, significantly contributed to the country’s socio-economic development.
However, the industry hasn’t been sustainable. Vietnam exploits millions of cubic metres of grown timber each year but most of its export products are the wood chips with low value. Meanwhile, Vietnam imports millions of cubic metres of timber at high prices as materials for the wood processing and export.
Since policies of reducing the exploitation of natural forest timber was put into effect in 1997, the output of natural forest timber has sharply decreased to 150.000-200.000 cubic metres/year. Timber from grown forest is mainly at small size, satisfying for paper production and the wood chip export industries. Materials for the wood product processing are mainly imported (80%). Local enterprises spent over US$ 2,7 billion for importing the materials from 2006 to 2008, accounting for 41.45% total turnover of the wood product export). Some enterprises tried to build up their own material areas in order to have sawn timber available with Forest Stewardship Council Chain of Custody (FSC-CoC) certification. Yet, it isn’t easy to access the forest land and productive forests.
The lack of materials and technical barriers set up by foreign countries are big challenges to the forest product processing, said experts from Vietnam General Department of Forestry. About 75-80% of Vietnam’s materials for the industry are now from importing resources with 10-20% increase of price/year. In addition, the timber with proper certification is very expensive and hard to access. At the beginning of 2010, just 175 wood export enterprises got FSC-CoC certifications in spite of their aggressive efforts.
* Solution: The wood processing should go with the sustainable forest management
Main agenda of the forum was to develop the wood processing in integration with the sustainable forest management, which the participants focused their discussion to find out helpful solutions.
The Vice Minister Hua Duc Nhi suggest 5 issues: policies for the wood processing and export; models of joint-venture and association between the afforestation and the wood processing; policies on enhancement of the sustainable forest management practices and the FSC-CoC certification granting; models of single enterprise or association of enterprises who operate from the very beginning step of afforestation, the wood processing to the wood product export; attention to Acts of LACEY and FLEGT.
The sustainable forest management plays a very important role in Vietnam’s forestry, said Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Lung from Vietnam Institute of Forest Protection and Management – Forest Certification. For that reason, the Decision No. 18/2007/QĐ-TTg on “Strategies of Vietnam Forestry Development, phase 2006-2020” was issued at the beginning of February 2007 by the Prime Minister. Mr Lung said it would be very necessary to publish detail and practical policies: encourage the forest owners to produce timber and non-timber products, to perform the wood processing as well as to enhance effectiveness of the forest-related services; to practice the forest management and marketing activities which encourage the best use and processing the diversified forest products at localities; to carry out activities which increase values of the forest-related services and forest resource exploitation,etc.; to immediately apply the minimal impact timber exploitation process to both of the natural forests and grown forests.
Binh Dinh had planned to grow 3 kinds of forests all over the province and paid much attention to the forest protection and development since 2001, said Mr. Vu Long, leader of Binh Dinh province forestry branch. The province has now 384,120 hectares of forest land, in which 194,888 hectares is protective forest land, 33,498 hectares is special-use forest land, 155,734 hectares is productive forest land. There is 88,132.8 hectares of grown forest available all over the province, in which the special-use grown forests account for 1,241.9 hectares, the protective grown forest: 25,271.3 hectares, the productive grown forest: 61,385.4 hectares and grown forest out of the planned land : 234.2 hectares. The problem is to push up forest land allocation and long-term land use right granting to organizations, families and individuals; meanwhile, there should be policies to encourage the material forest plantation for the paper production industry and the export-oriented forest product processing industry.
The wood processing enterprises in private and state sectors should co-operate in the material forest plantation, added Mr. Vu Long. Accordingly, the families and individuals in private sector would be funded to invest in their afforestation by the state companies. In return, they had to sell the products to the partners at the current market prices and pay back the loans.
Binh Dinh province Timber and Forest Product Association would pay its main concern in maintaining and strengthening its outdoor wood product processing industry, improving the quality and designs, enhancing the production and trade efficiency; transforming and developing the interior furniture production; speeding up co-operation and assistance to supporting industries like paper industry, packaging industry, chemistry industry, logistics, etc.; gradually balancing the need for domestic material through afforestation and combination use of alternative materials.
The forum closed but many solutions on the forest products processing and trade in integration with the sustainable forest management were put forwards. Hopefully, the industry would thrive more and actually be one of Vietnam’s most important industries.
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