Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered from 1 January 2022 to introduce a complete ban on the export of unprocessed coniferous and valuable deciduous timber from Russia. Such a cardinal decision was made to stop the uncontrolled (shadow) export of untreated timber in the country.

In the Russian Federation in the first half of 2020, 6.8 thousand cases of illegal logging with a volume of 507.5 thousand cubic meters were revealed. m and damage caused in the amount of US$50.8 million.

Experts point out that in order to combat smuggling in Russia, a number of innovations have been proposed. Among the main ones:

- creation of a unified state information system, in which, with the help of electronic accompanying documents, the entire chain of timber movement from logging to the manufacture of finished products and its export outside the Russian Federation will be reflected. If at any subsequent stage the system does not confirm "the legality of the wood origin, the transaction is blocked." According to the data of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, the country has almost 1 billion hectares of forests for which there is no reliable information, i.e. the data has not been updated for 10 years, because in fact, there is no unified state forest register. This means that about 85% of the entire forest fund is on the threshold of the "gray" zone.

-appointment of the federal state forest inspector. This directive is aimed at strengthening control, which will include supervision over the transportation, storage and processing of wood. The Rosprirodnadzor, which does not have the required number of employees, is in charge of protecting against black lumberjacks. In 2016, the number of employees of the department who carry out forest protection amounted to 61.1% of the required positions, and in 2017 - 68.8%. While one forest inspector should account for no more than 11.5 thousand hectares, for example, in the Siberian Federal District there are 82.4 thousand hectares. It is physically impossible to keep track of such a territory.

In general, according to experts, the introduction of a complete ban on the export of unprocessed timber will lead to both positive and negative consequences: a) will strike a blow to gray business in the regions bordering China; b) small companies, most likely, will not have time to create refining capacities by 2022, so large producers will remain the winners, and this threatens an uncontrolled rise in raw material prices.