According to the results of three quarters of 2023, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” supplied 8.68 million cubic meters of timber to buyers, which is 13.5% more than in the same period last year, said Yuriy Bolokhovets, acting CEO of the company.
“Timber sales are transparent, the rules of the game in the market are clear and predictable, as evidenced by the growth in the percentage of sales contracts fulfillment to almost 90%. Thus, the market is now balanced. Supply and demand are balanced,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to Bolokhovets, different price trends are observed for different types and species of wood. However, the average price of an impersonal cube of timber during the second and third quarters of 2023 decreased from UAH 1810 to UAH 1675.
The head of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” noted that not all market participants accept free competition and market pricing. “Some large players are used to solving the issue of resource supply behind the scenes and receiving timber under direct contracts and artificially low prices. Today, they are forced to compete with other processors and buy the resource at the price set by the market,” he stated and added that there will be no return to the practice of manual market regulation.
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 for the 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 Prozorro electronic platform.
Currently, the company has accumulated more than 130 thousand cubic meters of firewood for the 2023/2024 heating season.
