Report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
New analysis of the the government’s forestry and trade data points to a multi-billion dollar illegal logging and exports black hole – indicating widespread criminality and official corruption.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) briefing Data Corruption: Exposing the true scale of logging in Myanmar, scrutinises official figures on log harvests and timber exports over the past 15 years.
Shockingly, official export figures for 2000-13 account for only 28 per cent of all recorded international trade in Myanmar logs – suggesting that 72 per cent of log shipments were illicit.
Global buyers reported 22.8 million m3 of log imports from Myanmar, 16.4 million m3 more than claimed in official export statistics. If loaded into freight containers laid end to end, the unauthorised exports would stretch 2.3 times the length of Myanmar’s Irrawaddy River. These illegal exports were worth nearly US$6 billion – four times the combined 2013-14 education and health budgets for the entire country.
EIA also found official harvest volumes over the period constituted merely 53 per cent of reported imports of Myanmar logs, resulting in a 47 per cent illegal logging rate across the country for exports alone.
When discounting log transits across Myanmar’s land border with China, which Myanmar’s Government deem illegal, officially recorded export volumes were just 38 per cent of recorded imports, indicating that 62 per cent of log exports – about eight million m3 – were not authorised. Even excluding the country’s main illegal logging hotspots, illegal trade through Government-controlled areas resulted in 2.6 million m3 of logging in excess of authorised harvest volumes, generating in a 20 per cent illegal logging rate.
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