General

A few days ago, the Russian News Agency quoted Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev as saying that the Russian government has not considered lifting the log export ban that will take effect in 2022. "The Russian Federation government has decided to gradually increase export tariffs." Trutnev said, "This year's tariffs are 80%. The ban on log exports will come into effect next year. This is to create jobs in the Russian forestry industry, and Build more processing plants."

He also pointed out that the government has not considered removing protective tariffs. "Our plans for next year are based on the assumption that the export of logs is prohibited." Trutnev said.

Russia is one of the largest timber exporters in the world. In 2020, Russia will export 15 million cubic meters of logs, accounting for about 12% of the global log transaction volume. Among them, the export volume of softwood logs was 6.9 million cubic meters, a year-on-year decrease of 18.8%; while the average price dropped by 3.8% to US$76.0 per cubic meter.

China is the world's largest importer of softwood and hardwood logs. In 2020, China imported 6.5 million square meters of logs from Russia, which is relatively small in the past two decades. Despite this, Russia was still China's largest hardwood log and third-largest softwood log supplier last year. For decades, Russia has been an important log supplier to China. This ban and the export tax imposed on timber will directly affect China's timber processing industry, because China mainly imports a large amount of logs from the Russian Far East. Some experts believe that China will switch from imported logs to imported timber, thereby attracting Russian and European timber manufacturers to increase exports to China.