MOSCOW: In 2016, Russian forest and woodworking companies seem to have increased exports of their goods both in volume and value terms. These changes can be observed in the latest foreign trade customs statistics published by the Russian Federal Customs Service. According to the latest figures, in January-August 2016, Russia exported 13.275 million m3 of logs.
The Russian timber export grew by 9.97% over the respective period of the last year. The total value of the Russian logs exported during the above mentioned period of time reached US$896.6 million. That is 7.06% more than in January-August 2015. Notably, out of the total Russian timber exports, 343.1 million m3 were supplied to the CIS countries. The total value of Russian logs supplies came up to US$13.5 million.
In January-August 2016, Russian sawn timber exports grew as well. Thus, in the first 8 months of the current year Russia exported 10.863 million tons of sawn timber (Jan-Aug 2015: 9.435 million tons). Their total value came up to US$2.105 billion (Jan-Aug 2015: US$2.095 billion). Therefore, Russian sawn timber export volumes grew both in value and in volume over the respective period of the last year: in volume – by 15.12%, in value – by 0.45%. It’s worth mentioning that a positive trend has been observed: processed timber export volume is getting closer to the one of unprocessed timber. That may potentially be beneficial for the local economy and forest sector.
