Ministry of natural resources of Russia offers to extend time limit for renegotiation of existent contracts for the lease of forests till January 1, 2009

Jun 06, 2007. /Lesprom Network/. The ministry of natural resources of Russia offers to extend time limit for renegotiation of existent contracts for the lease of forests till January 1, 2009, minister of natural resources Yuriy Trutnev said coming out with report concerned to the process of introduction of Forest Code in Federation Council. The minister noted that land-surveying and cadastral accounting of the whole forest fund of Russian Federation is a very complicated task due to its scale, which constituent entities of RF can’t dissolve before the end of current year. Meanwhile, at present about 11 000 contracts with forest industrialists are already signed, and more than 100 million hectares of forests are leased and exploited. According to the Forest Code, all contracts should be re-issued before January 1, 2008. For this purpose it’s necessary to make land-surveying of these territories with borders marking, realize cadastral accounting of the lands, elaborate forest plans and regulations. “There are no organizations in Russia able to execute this work in statutory period”, minister said. In order not to cease the activity of the logging complex on January 1, 2008 the minister proposed to extend time limit for approval of forest plans and regulations till January 1, 2009, execute cadastral accounting of the forest lands in compliance with forest management materials, extend time limit for renegotiation of existent contracts for the lease of forests till January 1, 2009. Furthermore, additional financing in the amount of RUR 8.9 billion is necessary for elaboration of forest regulations, forest plans, maintenance of state forest register, forming of sites of forest fund during 2007. Yuriy Trutnev said that provision of the processing industry with necessary volume of raw materials continues to grow and now wood deliveries exceed needs of wood-processing enterprises by one third. Share of forest plots in long-term lease rose 1.5 times in the last three years.