Government of the Russian Federation endorsed the procedure of determining timber properties and measuring it

Russia used to have no uniform requirements to timber measurement. The previous version of state regulation in this area gave free rein to businesses. The new decree establishes consistent requirements applicable to everyone that prevent the possibility of manipulating data on timber.

Two key parameters are regulated for the first time in the endorsed document within timber properties identification and its measurement: reproducibility rate that stipulates the requirements to the process of measuring wood stacks, and the eccentric weight rate – the margin of allowable error that occurs during timber measurement and stock-taking at warehouses.

There are plans to introduce electronic documents “describing” the logs at the felling site, warehouse, processing enterprise or vehicle in the nearest future, within digital transformation of forest management. It will be possible to create all these documents based only on the requirements of the introduced procedure of identifying timber properties and measuring it.

The accounted-for timber is subject to state federal supervision over its transportation, storage, processing and transactions with it. Violating the timber measurement procedure entails imposition of an administrative penalty of 25,000 – 35,000 rubles for officials and 200,000 – 400,000 rubles for legal entities.