Green Paper - Regulation of the Timber Market

A Green Paper produced by the Better Regulation Delivery Office, with the support of the EU4Business FORBIZ project, on regulations in the timber market.

The report describes the goals of forest management in Ukraine as preservation of forests and commercial forestry. It says the inadequate regulatory framework of the forest industry impedes the effective realisation of these goals and precludes a balance between the interests of the state and businesses.

On the one hand, current regulations are cluttered with outdated and illegal norms, and on the other, there are significant gaps in the regulatory framework, including:

• no records of forests and their rational use are kept;
• there is no determination of the stage at which the forest becomes a commercial  commodity;
• existing regulation is powerless against illegal logging, and there are no methods to evaluate the losses;
• timber sale schemes are non-transparent;
• there are no common approaches to the definitions of “unprocessed timber”, “firewood”, “fuel wood”, etc.

The Green Paper analyses these problems and the underlying reasons, evaluating existing regulatory tools for efficiency, corruption risks, business benefits and expediency.

The Better Regulation Delivery Office, together with the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade and the State Regulatory Service of Ukraine, with the support of the FORBIZ project, has launched the ProDialogue under the EU4Business initiative. It aims to involve all stakeholders in reviewing regulatory solutions and working out ways to address them. As a result, a series of Green Papers has been developed, which analyse the current state of market issues and potential ways to improve the regulatory environment. A further set of White Papers represents a consolidated product of the groundwork by the business community and expert environment in the form of practical recommendations and suggestions for the authorities in order to improve the regulatory framework.