Vietnam forest industry might suffer raw materials shortage

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Vietnam’s wood industry faces a quandary as bright export growth prospects are clouded by difficulties in finding necessary raw materials, Vietnam News reported. 

Nguyen Ton Quyen, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Timber and Forest Product Association (VIFORES), expected a mixed bag of fortunes in the domestic wood sector this year, with a handful of new trade agreements set to take effect.

Quyen said that he was certain exports of wood products from Vietnam will increase significantly, even for a country that is already the world’s third largest and ASEAN’s biggest wooden furniture exporter.

He cited the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) as major boosts for wood exports, opening up access to a total of 28 markets across the world.

But such hope will be in vain without the necessary policies and guidelines to facilitate processing enterprises in the face of high global standards, changing technology and a shifting labour source, he added, as quoted by Vietnam News.

Worse still, while exports are to rise, the Vietnamese wood industry faces a seemingly insolvable problem of increasing the quantity of raw materials to meet producers’ demand for legally obtained timber, Vietnam News says. 

Quyen showed particular concern for an imminent fierce competition to obtain materials, especially from the Chinese market, whose wood processing industry is expected to demand about 60 million cubic metres of raw timber this year alone. He explained that Chinese enterprises will scour neighbouring markets to procure this massive amount of materials, thus putting Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries under competitive pressure.

Meanwhile, neighbouring countries such as Laos, Cambodia or Myanmar will continue to ban the export of logs and sawn timber directly from plantations, further reducing supply, Vietnam News said.

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