459 applications made for timber concessions

Aug 23, 2019 News

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Despite the high excitement in oil and gas, interest on the forestry sector has not dimmed.

In fact, says the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), there are almost 500 applications filed for 68 parcels of lands.
The poor roads, lower world prices and imported alternatives to wood products for especially housing have not daunted the interest.
According to Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, and Commissioner of Forestry, James Singh, there are 459 applications on file.
The applicants all want the 68 concessions that have been advertised by the Guyana Forestry Commission.
According to Singh, questioned yesterday about the safeguards to ensure transparency in the distribution of forestry lands, the concessions are advertised one month before the opening of interests.
Currently, the 459 applications after being screened and processed, are currently being reviewed by the Technical Sub-Committee of the GFC board.
Recommendations are then made to the full Board.
The award of the concessions could happen as early as next month, Singh disclosed.
In recent years, following the scandal involving Chinese investor, BaiShanLin, which received large tracts of state forests but failed to open processing facilities in keeping with its contractual agreements with the people of Guyana, there has been a tightening up of systems.
President David Granger had pledged another two million hectares for conservation purposes.
Following Barama Company Limited’s relinquishing of its 1.6 million hectare forest concession in October 2016, GFC awarded two lots totaling over 800,000 hectares of that concession to R.L. Sukhram and Sons Sawmill and Rong-An Inc.
The Ministry of Natural Resources had announced that along with the GFC, it has taken the decision to divide the former Barama Company Limited concession into four parcels, each of approximately 400,000 hectares.
The Ministry advertised two of those parcels as State Forest Exploratory Permits, which meant that there is a three-year process of assessment prior to commercial full scale harvesting.
The third parcel was identified for conservation and research, while the fourth was identified for small concession allocation of areas 20,000 acres and less.
In September 2016 also, authorities announced that in its first major strike to stamp out lawlessness and regain control of the forestry sector, it was moving to repossess over 600,000 hectares from BaiShanLin International Forest Development Inc., a Chinese logging company that has been under fire for its operations here.
The news of the concession seizures came as the commission continued to assess the operations of a number of large concession holders to ensure that they are in keeping with regulations and that commitments made in agreements are being honored.
The decision was taken after the cash-strapped BaiShanLin failed to deliver on agreed actions to introduce investors to the commission and failing despite being given time to prove that it had an acceptable plan to clear an approximately $80M debt.
BaiShanLin was not only involved in logging and export. It had also branched off to gold mining, housing, river transportation, ship building and even property acquisition.
Several of the ventures, including its unfinished luxury homes and a mall, would tell a stark tale of an investment that went all too wrong…all too quickly.
The company was even accused of burning down a large swath of forest up the Berbice River and never reporting it.
It owes the government of Guyana hundreds of millions of dollars for properties it bought, including the Cacique Banquet Hall behind Ramada Princess Casino, in Providence. It was taken to court by BK International, a local contractor for hundreds of millions of dollars owed for housing lands at Providence.
In Guyana, BaiShanLin was the third largest holder of state forests behind Barama Company Limited, a Malaysian company, and the Indian-owned Vaitarna Holdings.
In 2011, it was granted 52,896 hectares up the Berbice River through a company named Haimorakabra Logging Company Inc.
Through a number of questionable transactions called joint ventures, the Chinese logger acquired Puruni Woods- 107,671 hectares; Kwebanna Wood Products Inc.-87,361 hectares; Sherwood Forest Inc.- 167,075 hectares; Woods Association Industries Co Limited- 26,076 hectares and other concessions- all totally over 600,000 hectares.
The concessions are located in Regions One, Seven, Eight and Nine and Ten.
In recent years, the small loggers in especially Region 10, in the Upper Berbice area, have been calling for more forestry lands to be made available.

 

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