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Published on March 20, 2008

Undercover investigations by the United Kingdom-based Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak in Indonesia, revealed the huge number of smuggled logs from Laos was supplying the fast growing furniture industry in Vietnam.

Supply of illegal timber from Laos to Vietnam was of far greater quantity than to Thailand, said EIA representative Julian Newman, who gave no comparative figures.

The Lao government decreed last year that timber for export must be 100 per cent finished products. The only exception was for timber cut from expected inundated areas of dam reservoirs, such as the Nan Theun II.

 Illegal logging and timber smuggling from Laos is widespread. The EIA/Telapak report estimated that some 600,000 cubic metres was cut illegally in 2006, with a market value of US$250 million (Bt7.7 billion)

The smuggling of logs across the porous Laos-Vietnam border is facilitated by connections between military officers on both sides of the border, it said.

Vietnam has rapidly built a dynamic wood-processing industry and has earned a reputation as a world class producer of wooden furniture, exporting 90 per cent of its production to 120 countries around the world.

Vietnam exported furniture worth US$2.4 billion last year, making wood products Vietnam's fifth largest export earner.

"Such phenomenal growth has propelled Vietnam past Indonesia and Thailand to become the second largest exporter of wood products in Southeast Asia and the fourth largest in the world," the report said.

Thailand, which used to import a huge quantity of timber from Laos in early 1990s, no longer relied on its supply from Laos.

The six-month long investigation by EIA/Telapak indicated that Thailand played a significant role as financier in the Laos timber trade. Much of the Thai logging trade in Laos was linked to rural development and dam projects carried out by Thai-owned construction companies such as Ch Karnchang and Italian-Thai.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

The Nation