Forestry development norms fulfilled ahead of schedule

Illustration photo

The sector  has contributed to protecting the ecological environment, mitigating natural disasters, and transfering the forestry production from self-provision to commodity. 

Forestry production yearly expanded 6%, nearly doubling that in the 2006-2020 period, surpassing the preset goal of 3.5-4% as the Strategy set by 2020. Overseas shipment of forestry products also surged sharply, up third time over the last ten years from US$ 2.18 billion in 2006 to US$ 7.3 billion by 2016. The export turnover was projected to hit about US$ 8-8.5 billion, outstripping the set norm of US$ 7 billion. 

Afforestration has been implemented positively with an average of 225,000 hectares. 

Over the last ten years, woody exploitation output increased over five times from 3.2 million m3 in 2006 to about 17 million m3 by 2016. 

However, there are some shortcomings in the forestry sector such as forest destruction, illegal exploitation of forests especially for valuable and rare forest products; misuse of forest land. 

The size of forest production remains small and scattered, coupled with poor management, weak infrastructure, and outdated SMEs. Moreover, labor productivity of forest processing is still low with weak competitiveness in quality and models./.

By Kim Loan