Why Russia can not refuse to export round timber

The Russian Government has set a target indicator: by 2024 Russian forest industry exports should reach $ 17 billion ($ 12.3 billion by the end of 2019). Under these conditions, the question of the introduction of lumber duties sounded more and more clearly. It is noteworthy that throughout the year the authorities threatened to ban the timber export to China and even make the order in Russian forests.

The new Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Dmitry Kobylkin has repeatedly spoken about this. But, as the situation in February 2020 showed, when the Chinese authorities wanted to suspend the import of unprocessed timber from Russia, the Russian side was not ready to completely abandon the timber export. On the one hand, the Russian Government has been trying for more than a decade to stimulate the forestry business to switch from timber exporting to deeper processing, and on the other, when the duty has become virtually protective for timber producers in the Far East (60% in 2020 and 80% in 2021), timber merchants (loggers of the Far East, first of all) were not able to integrate into the current market conditions.