Viktoria Abramchenko, Deputy Prime Minister supervising the timber industry in the Government, held a meeting on the issues of the timber industry development

Highlights:

The Russian Government realizes that the timber industry is facing objective economic challenges, a logistics blockade, and other problems. That is why state support measures introduced in 2022 will be extended for another year. In 2022, timber enterprises received 17 billion rubles’ worth of state support and will receive no less in 2023.

The Ministry of Construction was instructed to cooperate with the regions of the Northwestern Federal District to launch pilot projects on applying wooden structures in the program of rehousing citizens from dilapidated dwellings.

Measures on boosting the domestic demand for woodworking products shall be developed. This primarily concerns incentivizing the development of the wooden house kits market, using CLT panels when implementing territory development projects, and converting boiler houses running on fuel oil to biofuel.

As for logistics and transportation, exported timber products from timber enterprises that have a forest raw material supply area and possess woodworking industrial facilities will be transported first.

What has already been done? 35.8 billion rubles’ worth of subsidies have been paid to timber enterprises to reimburse some of the costs of products’ export transportation since 2017, including 7.9 billion rubles in 2022.

To support private housing projects and use of house kits in such projects, measures of applying subsidized mortgage programs will be developed, which will also apply to factory-made houses.

As for the export, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Transport were instructed to develop a new type of state support that would reduce the costs of transporting timber industry products by sea and transshipping them at the ports of Saint Petersburg, the Murmansk Region, and the Arkhangelsk Region. Transportation of a single container by sea currently costs $1,500–2,000 more than by rail.

The Government supported increasing the maximum amount of the export logistics subsidy for a single enterprise to 500 million rubles.

As for the rent on forest areas use based on the volume of actually harvested timber, the Government will grant the right of making the corresponding decision to individual regions of the Russian Federation. The state support must depend on harvesting enterprises’ and timber processing enterprises’ obligation of keeping the jobs. The Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Finance, and the Federal Forestry Agency (Rosleskhoz) will work on this issue and submit a draft regulation and a financial feasibility study.

As for public purchasing, the Government supported a proposal to limit the purchase of imported copy paper for state needs to support domestic pulp and paper mills.