By item, log export was yen 3.165 billion, 173.8% more than the same period of last year, exceeded total amount of last year in six months. Weaker yen made the Japanese logs much competitive so the log export to China, Korea and Taiwan has been climbing rapidly. Meantime, export of other products like lumber and plywood has also been increasing by 13.9% and 23.4% respectively.
The government plans to increase the export of forest products from yen 12.3 billion ($122 million) in 2012 to yen 25 billion ($228 million) in 2020 and the Forestry Agency allocated sixty million yen budget for performance experiments in China by Chinese standard, promotion to use the Japanese products in China, holding seminars and exhibition and making guidance manuals.
Logs for China are mainly C grade logs for crating lumber and engineering works. In Japan, thinning used to be abandoned in the woods but now they are encouraged to haul out so that the supply of C grade logs has been increasing.
