Esko Aho, Chief Ombudsman of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, is urging forestry landowners to sell timber to the forestry products industry. The chair of a workgroup on the future of the forestry industry says that holding back on timber supplies could be harmful to the domestic economy. The impending steep increase in duties on timber coming from Russia is threatening to dam up supplies from Finland's neighbour to the east. Activity at the pulp mill in Kemijärvi has slowed down, due in part to the increased tariffs. When the tariffs increase further, many other mills will be affected.
Esko Aho has closely followed the progress of negotiations between Finland, Russia and the EU on the matter.
"It has been a disappointing to see that there has been no resolution up to this point. Every week and month that goes by makes it extremely difficult for companies in the forestry industry to plan for the future," Aho said.
Since February, Aho's working group has tried to kick start the timber trade by means of an interim report. However these efforts have been to no avail. Now the race is on to get logs out of the forests to feed the domestic industry.
Aho is appealing to both buyers and sellers of timber - particularly to sellers.
The working group chair said that landowners should take the long term view that if the domestic industry shrinks significantly, then it won't be long before timber sales also follow suit.
"If landowners think it might be worthwhile to stockpile supplies and wait until prices rise before selling, then it would be short sighted and damaging," he added
If the proposed duties are implemented to their full extent, timber imports from Russia would stop altogether. And if other suppliers are not found, production in the industry would drop sharply. The Prime Minister in particular understands what that would mean, said Aho.
"It would result in immeasurable losses. The capacity of the industry to adjust would be seen in jobs, growth in national output, and in overall wellbeing," he added.
