The State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has put up more than 1 million cubic meters of timber for additional auctions, which will be held on the principle of Dutch auctions, the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets said on Facebook. According to him, this record-breaking amount of wood was accumulated at the expense of unsold products in the fourth quarter of 2023.
“Uncertainty with the borders plus the holiday season in the EU reduced the demand for wood. Many processors have taken a break…. Demand is gradually recovering, but the situation remains difficult in some market segments,” stated the company’s CEO.
Bolokhovets said that due to the blockade of the borders, the losses of the branches of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” exceeded UAH 1 billion over three months.
“If not for the timely reform, dozens of forestry enterprises would have been on the verge of bankruptcy in January. It is only thanks to subsidies from the central level that employees of all (!) our branches receive their salaries on time. All branches have working capital to carry out their activities, no one has stopped,” he emphasized.
Speaking about the plans of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” for 2024, Bolokhovets noted that amid unfavorable assessments of the timber market prospects for both processors and sellers of raw materials, the company intends to support the market. There are no plans to reduce harvesting. On the contrary, more than 1 million cubic meters of wood from the closure of state processing will be added to the last year’s trading volume.
“Forests of Ukraine will also continue to work to reduce costs, increase efficiency and eliminate corruption.
“This means mandatory assessment and justification of investments, the most open and competitive procurement, efficient use of equipment and other resources. Sale of unprofitable assets, optimization of the administrative staff. Reducing the cost of the resource through the construction of new forest roads. Finally, eradication of such phenomena as substitution of timber grades and other manifestations of corruption,” stated the CEO of the state enterprise.
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 electronic platform Prozorro.
