Russia has informed China about its plans to amend forestry legislation to protect vast resources in Siberia and the Far East

Thursday, March 23, 2023

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Russia has informed China, a major consumer of Russian timber, about its plans to amend forestry legislation to protect vast resources in Siberia and the Far East, a senior official said Tuesday. The planned amendments will promote sustainable use of Russia's forest resources by imposing duties on unprocessed round-wood exports, Valery Roshchupkin, head of the government agency overseeing the industry. However, the export of lumber products will be duty-free, as will be the import of advanced processing equipment not produced domestically. "We expect that a forestry code fundamentally changing attitudes toward the use of forest resources will be adopted by autumn," he said. "Exporting wood products will become a far more lucrative business than selling raw logs." According to the official, the leasing policy will be reviewed to give priority to large, vertically-integrated timber companies which apply for logging concessions of 25 years or longer, over smaller businesses seeking short-term concessions. Improvements to forestry legislation were high on the agenda at a conference held a fortnight ago in the Republic of Komi, in northeastern European Russia. At the conference, President Vladimir Putin stressed the need to develop the country's timber processing infrastructure. "Our neighbors continue to earn billions of dollars on Russian raw logs while we are doing very little to create conditions for processing timber domestically," he said. More than 40% of China's total log imports come from the Russian Far East, a figure that is expected to rise in the next few years.

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