Dear Editor,

Minister for Forestry Robert Persaud was quoted in the Guyana Chronicle on April 23, 2007, as banning the export of unprocessed logs by Bai Shan Lin (‘Bai Shan Lin’s request to export logs denied’).

This Chinese-owned enterprise receives foreign direct investment benefits from the Government of Guyana, in order to stimulate in-country value-added timber processing. Bai Shan Lin does not itself hold a logging concession.

According to extended exchanges during August and September 2007, reported in all three Georgetown daily newspapers, Bai Shan Lin had entered into a technical management agreement with Demerara Timbers Ltd (DTL) to provide value enhancement to DTL’s logging operation but denied that it had obtained effective management control of DTL.

Daily convoys of Bai Shan Lin sealed containers are noted on the road between the Mabura Hill operation of DTL and Georgetown wharves. The Mabura Hill mill is not run at the level of productivity to fill these shipping containers with dimensioned lumber (planks or boards).

Simple squaring of logs to allow better packing of containers for export is a crude evasion of the Minister’s ban on log exports by Bai Shan Lin.

At his press conference on December 8, 2006, Minister Persaud promised 100 per cent verification of timber shipments. Will Minister Persaud confirm that all the Bai Shan Lin containers are inspected daily, and that squared logs are not being exported? Is the continued high volume of effectively unprocessed logs the reason for the lack of monthly publications on forest product exports from Guyana since February 2008? Import statistics from China and India suggest that this is so.

So, Minister Persaud, what progress with the log export ban agreed by 350 national stakeholders on February 17, 2007?

Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan