In January-June 2024, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” earned UAH 11.14 billion, which is significantly more than in the same period in 2023, said the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“The absence of in-house processing is fully compensated by a 15% increase in sales of unprocessed wood,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Bolokhovets also noted that the state-owned enterprise has also lost significant subsidized assets, which the State Property Fund sells through Prozorro. Keeping non-core assets for years only drained the company’s funds, he explained.
“As a result, we expect a significant increase in the company’s profits. It’s too early to talk about specific figures, but it’s hundreds of millions of hryvnias more than last year,” the CEO emphasized.
Such decisions allowed the company to increase salaries of lower-level employees – forest masters and assistant foresters – and to increase social guarantees for demobilized employees, of which the company has more than 500.
In addition, the state-owned enterprise was able to raise prices for contractors and increase spending on the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“The reform has changed everything. The State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has moved to a model of market wages and transparent conditions for organizing production,” summarized its CEO.
According to the Opendabot service, the total profit of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” in 2023 amounted to UAH 2.8 billion.
As reported, Ukraine launched a forestry reform in 2016. As part of it, the sale of raw wood at electronic auctions has already been introduced. Since 2021, an interactive map of wood processing facilities has been operating in a test mode in a number of regions.
The industry has implemented the Forest in a Smartphone project, which contains a list of logging tickets for timber harvesting and allows you to check the legality of logging on the agency’s online map.
On June 1, 2023, Ukraine launched a pilot of electronic issuance of logging tickets and certificates of origin of timber. In addition, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has launched a pilot project to procure timber harvesting services through the electronic platform Prozorro.
