Ukrainian woodworkers have proposed that 50% of unprocessed timber is sold at electronic auctions and 50% is sold under long-term contracts on the term of the offer, aiming at stable development of forestry and support of deep processing of wood.
The concept, proposed for amending a bill on the wood market, was announced by Director General of Kronospan Ukraine LLC Natalia Pokinska at a press conference organized by the InvestRivne agency in Kyiv on Thursday.
According to her, industry representatives are proposing a “cascade” principle of holding auctions on electronic platforms, i.e. they can be of four types: basic, additional, repeated and additional repeated.
At the same time, the participants in the main auctions should be woodworking enterprises that have submitted a declaration on the relevant activity and are included in the register of wood processing entities, and the participants in the additional ones – buyers of wood for needs not related to processing and production of products from it, as well as manufacturers of wood chips and companies that use timber as an alternative source of energy, biofuel producers and nonresidents.
“If we compare an entity that buys raw materials for the production of chipboard and a buyer for biofuel production, they are also in different categories for government support, since the energy industry provides for certain subsidies, and such buyers can pay more for raw materials and compete with the real sector which deeply processes wood,” Pokinska said.
Regarding the conclusion of contracts for the sale of timber on the term of the offer, industry representatives also propose to conduct them on a transparent electronic platform (“forest portal”), and publish the results automatically after the offer was approved to avoid accusations of non-transparency or behind-the-scenes of the process.
“We have analyzed the laws of other states, EU directives, and we can say that such a cascade is a guarantee of deeper processing of raw materials with high added value,” the director general of the company said.
