In January-March 2024, the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” increased its revenue from timber sales by 30.8% compared to the same period in 2023, up to UAH 5.1 billion, said the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“Tax payments increased by more than UAH 850 million. Pre-tax profit increased to almost UAH 1 billion,” he wrote on Facebook.
Bolokhovets mentioned the blockade of the western borders as one of the negative factors that affected the company’s performance, which led to a rise in the cost of export logistics. This, in turn, affected both processors and foresters.
Among the positive factors, the CEO of Forests of Ukraine mentioned the closure of forestry processing shops, which were not cost-effective to maintain.
“The denationalization of the processing market has increased competition, transparency, and significantly reduced corruption risks,” Bolokhovets said, adding that the abandonment of forestry processing will have a more significant impact on the economic performance of the second and third quarters.
As reported, Ukraine launched a forestry reform in 2016. It has already introduced the sale of unprocessed timber at electronic auctions. 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 electronic platform Prozorro.
