The report "The Impact of the Russia-Ukraine War on the Vietnamese Timber Industry: Present and Future" is a product of the VIFOREST, HAWA, BIFA, DOWA, FPA Binh Dinh associations and the Forest Trends organization. The report was presented at the online seminar "The Russia-Ukraine Conflict and its Potential Impact on the Vietnamese Timber Industry" held on March 9, 2022.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict continues and shows no signs of abating. Because the Russian Federation is one of the largest exporters of raw materials such as palladium, natural gas, oil, and grain globally, the conflict is disrupting the supply of these commodities from Russia and having a significant impact on the entire global economy. Prices of all these commodities from Russia have risen sharply since January 4th and are trending upwards.
Russia has been a comprehensive strategic partner of Vietnam since 2012. Following the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union, which came into effect in 2016, Vietnam became Russia's largest trading partner among ASEAN countries, with exports from Vietnam to Russia and imports from Russia accounting for one-third of Russia's exports and imports to Southeast Asian countries.
Russia is a country with vast forest resources: It has 815 million hectares of forest and an annual timber harvest of over 200 million cubic meters, equivalent to 101 TP3T of the total global timber supply (Malgules Groome, 2021). Each year, Russia supplies over 40 million cubic meters to the world market.
Online discussion forum: “Russia-Ukraine conflict and its potential impact on Vietnam's timber industry”
For the Vietnamese market, Russia has not been a major market, neither in terms of raw timber supply nor in terms of wood product consumption. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is affecting the global supply and demand landscape for raw timber and wood products. Given Vietnam's deep integration into the global wood industry, the impact of the conflict on Vietnam's raw timber supply and on the markets consuming Vietnamese wood products is unavoidable.
Report The impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the Vietnamese timber industry, both present and future. This report provides some initial assessments of the future impact of this conflict on Vietnam's timber industry. It utilizes data from Vietnam Customs and the International Trade Center of UNCOMTRADE. The report focuses on Vietnam-Russia timber trade. Although Ukraine and Belarus are directly involved in the ongoing conflict, they are two smaller markets for Vietnam's timber industry and are therefore not a priority for the report. Before going into detail, Part 2 of the report updates the current state of timber and wood product trade between Vietnam and Russia. Part 3 provides information on the supply of raw timber from Russia in recent years, focusing on major markets. Part 4 discusses some of the future impacts of the conflict on Vietnam's timber industry. In conclusion (Part 5), the report offers recommendations to regulatory agencies and the business community in the timber industry to mitigate future negative impacts.
Vietnam Wood Magazine – VIFOREST
