Oct 15, 2008. /Lesprom.com/. Representatives from the timber industry emphasised that the nation should follow the European Union in clamping down on the consumption of wooden products made from illegally-logged timber, at a workshop in Ho Chi Min City yesterday, Viet Nam News reported. The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Dutch Development Organisation. The EU is a major market for Viet Nam’s wooden products, which last year brought in US$2.4 billion in exports, according to MARD’s International Co-operation Department deputy director Tran Kim Long. This figure is expected to increase to $3 billion this year and $3.4 billion by 2010. Viet Nam has emerged as the second-largest exporter of wooden products in Southeast Asia and the fourth-largest in the world. An increasing demand for wooden products in Europe, North America and East Asia has forced these nations to create legal and economic mechanisms to prevent the import of any products made of illegally-logged timber and to encourage imports from legal logging sources. Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) is just one of several tools being applied by seven EU members, including the Netherlands, Great Britain, Denmark, France, Belgium and Spain, according to Hugh Speechly from the UK’s Department for International Development. To meet FLEGT standards and boost imports to the EU, Viet Nam’s timber industry is planning to reduce its imports of timber from the current figure of 80 per cent of total demand to 20 per cent by 2020 through increased afforestation, according to a forestry development strategy for 2006-2020. In addition to the EU, Viet Nam’s wooden products are now available in 120 overseas markets, including the US and Japan. The industry boasts some 2,000 wood processing enterprises that provide jobs for over 250,000 workers.