As we all know, Africa is rich in forest resources, with the highest quality and many varieties of wood varieties, rich in mahogany, ebony, rosewood, ebony, walnut and so on. Gabon and Cameroon in West Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo in Central Africa are all timber-rich countries, and most other regions also export a small amount of timber, and Africa occupies an important position in the global timber trade.
Imports of African timber from the mainland have shrunk
In recent years, the global forest environment has been threatened by deforestation, pests and diseases, climate change and the growing demand for wood. In the State of the World's Trees Report, released to the world by the International Union for the Conservation of Botanical Gardens (BGCI) last year, Africa has the highest proportion of threatened tree species.
In response, African countries have issued various policies to take stricter scrutiny of endangered timber imports from some African countries and ban log exports, which has a huge impact on the number of tropical timber imports on the mainland.
From the perspective of customs statistics in 2021, in 2021, the mainland's timber imports from Congo (Brazzaville), Cameroon and Gabon have declined, with a decline of 24.23%, 1.85% and 18.47% respectively, and the market shows a clear downward trend.
The implementation of the ban on the export of logs from the Congo Basin is on the agenda
Earlier, the six central African economic and monetary community countries (Equatorial Guinea, Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, Cameroon, Chad, central African Republic, hereinafter collectively referred to as CEMAC) have said that they have postponed the implementation of a comprehensive ban on log exports originally planned to begin on January 1, 2022, until January 1, 2023, but have not yet been implemented with certainty.
On 7 June, the Central African states held a seminar at the initiative of the CEMAC Committee, after which it was announced that, considering that the decision to ban the export of logs from 1 January 2023 would inevitably lead to a significant reduction in forest taxes, it was decided to issue a new forest tax proposal before the ban on log exports came into force.
At present, in addition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo wishing for more time to reflect, the countries of the subregion have formally adopted forest tax and certification legislation as part of the entry into force of the timber export ban on 1 January 2023.
In addition, the CEMAC region has also proposed four draft texts to push the implementation of the log export ban on the agenda.
- Draft directive on the establishment of a harmonized framework for forest tax incentives related to the export of processed wood products
- Draft decision on the characteristics and classification of processed wood products
- Draft decision on complementary measures to implement a strategy for the sustainable industrialization of the timber industry in the Congo Basin
- Draft guidelines for subregional forest certification developed by Comifac for the implementation of a sustainable timber industrialization strategy in the Congo Basin
Africa is one of the continent's main suppliers of tropical timber in the world, and its logs account for almost 10% of the continent's total log imports.
Although the ban on log exports has been postponed until January 2023, as the implementation of the ban on log exports in the Congo Basin is gradually put on the agenda, the mainland, as a major player in the African timber market, is expected to have a certain impact on the import volume of African timber in the short term.