Write details of timber trade with special reference to Pakistan

Pakistan has relatively little forest land. Out of the 4.5 million ha. Of public forests covering only 5.4% of the land surface, two-thirds are non-commercial. These are managed for soil and water conservation objectives. 

The public forest lands in the arid areas of Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan are largely used as open grazing grounds for livestock as rainfall is scantly and other climatic and edaphic conditions are unfavorable for tree growth.

The remaining one-third of public forests are productive but since they are mostly growing on steep an unstable slopes in the Himalayan and Karakoram regions they are vulnerable to natural hazards. Their management is quite primitive, in particular harvests are extremely conservative, and management lacks essential inputs which result in low yield from these forests. 

Pakistan’s goals of creating new forests in the public and private sectors are ambitions. Currently, efforts are directed at launching tree plantation campaigns twice a year, in the spring and monsoon periods, to induce farmers and the general public to plant tree on farmlands and elsewhere to meet their fuelwood needs for energy and their timber needs for houses, agriculture purposes, and alternative cash crops.

Since the country wide demand for timber far exceeds the supply, there is almost no export of unprocessed wood resources.

Export of finished products.

Pakistan does not export wood because of its shortage in the country. However, Pakistan encourages the exports of finished products such as furniture, veneer and sport’s goods to earn much needed foreign exchange. 

For this purpose, certain concessions have been given to all export-oriented industries including those exporting wood products. These concessions are the same for all industries.

Imports

Due to the shortage within the country, wood and wood products have been retained on the free list for import. However, excessive import of these items is controlled through tariff. The duties on log, timber and wood products range from 50 – 125 percent and volume. Such a high tariff restricts the import to high-value timber products such as teak.

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