The government in Mozambique has proposed a total ban on all the exports of unprocessed logs, no matter of the tree species they come from.
Xavier Sakambuera, the national director of forests in the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development, announced that a bill has already been drafted and deposited with the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, as reported by Club of Mozambique.
This would be the first total ban, despite several attempts in the past to prohibit the logs exports from particular species of hardwoods. This ban is most likely to meet opposition from logging interests, who want to destroy the forests in Mozambique as to sell unprocessed wood to foreign buyers, particularly from China.
Since all the log exports would be illegal, once the ban is turned into law, the forest wardens and customs inspectors will no longer have to determine what kind of trees the logs come from. At the moment, Mozambique is losing 220,000 hectares of forest each year, not only due to logging, but also because of uncontrolled bush fires and the clearing of land for building purposes.
According to Club of Mozambique, a ban will greatly reduce illegal logging, and will create more jobs in the timber processing industry.
Sakambuera said that the technology in the timber industry will be modernized and the government is confident that the prices charged in marketing wood throughout the country will be adjusted.
