Contrary to national policy and the FPA, export of timber logs to Asia is thriving

Dec 10, 2012 Letters

Dear Editor,
The Forest Products Association (FPA) of Guyana is one of the oldest trade associations in the Caribbean, founded in 1944.  Like the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), the FPA admits the Asian-owned timber companies as members.  So it is unclear if statements coming from the FPA represent the Guyanese loggers and millers or the dues-paying Asians (‘Gold rush, concrete ‘fell’ forestry industry’, Stabroek News business section, 07 December 2012).
The FPA statements about the forest sector being in hard times are not sustained by the data.  In the nine months to September 2012, log exports totaled 66,270 m3 compared with 80,652 m3 in the same nine months of 2011.  In 2012, 27,764 m3 (42 per cent) went to China and 35,024 m3 (53 per cent) to India, including a whopping 16,640 m3 to India in August 2012.  These log exports represented 54 per cent of log production in the first six months of 2012 (the latest data published by the Guyana Forestry Commission), compared with 56 per cent in 2011.  These data do not show that the forest sector is in the doldrums.
Former FPA President Hilbertus Cort was reported as saying that the sector could not produce bankable proposals, and so was short of financial credit.  But when the European Union offered development funds in Region 10 through LEAP/LEAF, it was Bai Shan Lin which secured US $ 10 million in EU funding for the mill at Coomacka Mines (‘Mixed reviews for LEAP -next two years seen as crucial for Linden scheme,’ Stabroek News, 18 June 2007; ‘Coomacka aka ‘’The Mines’, Stabroek News, 02 December 2012).  Bai Shan Lin is part-owned by the transnational Beijing Uni-Construction Company (BUCC) which is itself part-owned by the Government of China which supplies capital to BUCC.  There is no public record that the FPA or GMSA has protested about unfair competition from the publicly-subsidized Bai Shan Lin; which employed the said Hilbertus Cort.
The historical record is that at least some of the Guyanese-owned companies in the FPA have received low-cost loans and credit from international agencies precisely to enable re-capitalisation and modernization.  And see also the standing offers of investment incentives for the forest sector on the website of GO-Invest.  If those promised incentives are not actually available, because of personality-based or politically based interference by government agencies, then the forest sector companies should use the members of the National Assembly to raise Parliamentary Questions with the relevant Ministers.
It is legitimate to complain long and loudly that the PPP/C administration has failed to implement the national policies for in-country processing and adding-value to forest outputs, in spite of promises in the election manifestos of 2006 and 2011, and has instead allowed a boom in illegal forest harvesting and log exports.  It does not seem legitimate to complain about lack of financial capital when that has been offered but not taken up.
Janette Bulkan