Dear Editor,
The statement from the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) as reported by Kaieteur News letter to the Editor, Saturday, January 31, fails to address the non-compliance with approved national forest policy for on-shore value-added processing of forest products, which is also the policy of all three main political parties in their last (2011) manifestos. Export volumes and values of forest products have changed by only small amounts for the last several years, while export volumes of unprocessed logs declared at what is widely believed to be below market values have continued to rise year after year.
If the exported 138,502 m3 of logs had been converted into rough-sawn (undressed) and profiled (dressed) lumber (using the GFC standard for log-to-lumber conversion of 0.4 for rough-sawn and 0.3 for profiled lumber, with a 50/50 split of the log between rough sawn and profiled lumber), we would have been able to export 48,500 m3 of lumber at US$894.00 average FOB price/m3, totalling US$43.4 million. Instead, the Asian log exporters declared only US$24.4 million. In other words, we would have generated almost twice the value of exports from the same volume of logs if the GFC had actually implemented the approved national policy of in-country processing.
In addition, of course, more processing also means more jobs (potentially for Guyanese rather than imported staff), and more training and higher levels of skill, hence more taxes for government revenue and greater benefits to suppliers of services in the economy of Guyana. In the GFC’s annual report for 2009, issued in November 2013, the GFC estimated that there were more employees in logging (13,000) than in all forms of forest sector processing (11,000). Putting the approved national policies for adding value should invert this ratio.
Any responsible government should, nay, must above all protect our natural resources for future generations whilst at the same time ensure the maximum benefits are accrued from these resources. That will not happen by exporting logs. For the GFC, the custodian of our country’s most valuable natural resource to say that Wamara, a prime timber species, equivalent to a ‘Rolls Royce’ is a lesser known timber species is a warped, conniving statement.
A billion people in China alone know the value of this timber. Editor, are we satisfied with just a few pieces of silver lining our pockets instead of the greater good of our citizens?
Yours faithfully,
Howard Bulkan
