Sustainable development of the wood processing industry—the achievement of this operational objective of the Government Action Program—is now the responsibility of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, whereas until recently, forestry was overseen by the Ministry of Economy and Environment.
According to the Program, which the Cabinet of Ministers submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food is tasked with approving the Strategy for the Development of Ukraine’s Wood Processing and Furniture Industries for the period up to 2030 and adopting an operational plan of measures for its implementation for 2026–2028 (2026).
Other tasks in this area include introducing, in 2027, uniform rules for the functioning of the timber market for all permanent forest users and forest owners; completing the corporatization of the state-owned enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”; and imposing a permanent moratorium on the sale of state-owned shares.
The forestry sector and the State Forest Resources Agency (State Forest Agency) were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy until 2019, after which they were transferred to the jurisdiction of the merged Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection (Ministry of Energy and Environment), and in 2020, following its split, they were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, where they remained until the summer of 2025, when yet another merged ministry was created—the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture.
People’s Deputy Olga Vasilevska-Smaglyuk criticized the possible decision to return the forestry sector to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy. “The key risk is a change in the very philosophy of forest management. Forests cannot be viewed merely as an economic resource that needs to be used more efficiently. After all, they are first and foremost natural capital, an ecosystem, and a component of the country’s environmental security,” she explained.
In her view, such a transfer could also slow down the corporatization of the state-owned enterprise “Forests of Ukraine,” the digitization of timber accounting, and the transition to European forest management standards.
CORPORATIZATION, FOREST, MINISTRY OF AGRARIAN POLICY, TIMBER, WOOD PROCESSING
