The Government continued to oblige holders of forest concessions to exercise certification of forest management or to obtain legalization label for logging of the forest industry in order to strengthen competitive edge of export products. Certification of management of conservation forest served as answer to demand of buyer countries who demanded logging from legal resources. The verification system for wood legality (SVLKI) also served as effort to block out entry of woods from illegal logging which had been an obstacle to expansion effort of Indonesian woods especially to European countries. With SVLK, Indonesian woods were guaranteed to be accepted in the international market.
Indonesia and Uni Europe had agreed to foster collaboration in trading which was expected to protect Indonesian forests from destruction by looters. The agreement included certification of wood to be exported to Europe so beside prohibiting sales of illegal logging, buyers were also forbidden to buy uncertified logs. The voluntary partnership agreement (VPA) in law enforcement, management, and trading in forestry business (FLEGT) were all serious Government’s effort to fight illegal logging practices.
The business world welcomed Government’s intention to crack down illegal logging and trading of illegal log and to promote credibility of the Indonesian forestry industry whereby to fairly compete in international trading. However, it must not happen that just for the sake of strengthening competitiveness of Indonesia’s wood products, the Government had to scarify logging companies especially of the small business (UKM) category. To put SLVK into effect did not mean to burden small business Loging operators were expecting that the execution of SLVK not be based of generalization.
According to Ambar Tjahyono, Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Furniture and Handicraft Producers (Asmindo) in Jakarta (Friday 24/2/2012) implementation by generalization would not only disable small business and home industry. Ambar was hoping that implementation of SVLK for home industry not be equalized with industry in big scale. Certification of legalization should be given for free. “Frankly speaking small companies do mind if they had to bear the certification expenses for wood” Ambar was quoted as saying.
For that matter Ambar proposed that cost of SLVK procedure be home by the Government. Ambar underscored that the cost of SLVK application was too high for small-and-medium business. The cost was Rp 70 million and certainly too heavy for producers of the small-and-medium (IKM) category. He elaborated that IKM played a prevalent role in Indonesia’s furniture industry as subcontractor for big exporters. Without SLVK, he said, furniture products of big companies which were partly produced by IKM subcontractors could be rejected from entering the Euro or USA market.
Ambar explained that The Regulation of the Ministry of Forestry no 68/2011 obliged furniture producers to have SLVK previously the rule was only applicable to primary logging industry such as hardboards and processed wood. SLVK certificates could be used as reference of legality of wood raw materials for wood based commodities marketed in Indonesia and overseas to replace recommendation of the Board of Revitalization of Forestry Industry (BRIK). Application of this SLVK certificate was to anticipate tightened screening over wood products via Uni Europe (EU FLEGHT), Japan (Konjubo) and the USA (Lacey Act).
Business News - February 29, 2012
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