Growing demand for natural wood in Vietnam, Thailand and China
mainly due to rapid development of the export-oriented wood
processing industry and reforestation policies
• Overcapacity of processing factories (estimated at 3-3.4 million m3)
• Ambiguous and sometime unnecessarily complicated legislation
provides opportunity for violations and corruption (in 2012 Laos
ranked 160 out of 176 countries by perceived levels of corruption,
CPI)
• Lack of reliable forest inventory prior issuing of logging permit
facilitates wood laundering
• Lack of law enforcement regarding numerous development logging
quotas (infrastructure, hydropower, mining, cash-crops plantations)
• Vietnamese authorities do not recognize the existence of transboundary
illegal timber trade and have thus little motivation to
validate legality of imported timber origin