Dear Editor,
I refer to your article in today’s SN (Aug 18) – ‘Finance Minister under fire over timber stats’ and wish to offer a few comments.
Included in the article was a column showing some details on the exports of forest products for
the period January-June 2013 and 2014 which were provided by the GFC. From those stats if you
divide the value by volume you can get an average price per cubic metre in US dollars.
So the average prices for these five products were : –
Dressed Lumber – 1231.04
Sawn Shingles – 1039.41
Rough Sawn Lumber – 737.96
Plywood 504.44
Logs – 160.49
Value –added in our case is increasing the value of the timber at source. And in the process it does inter alia, create more jobs for locals, more skills training by transfer of technology, more foreign exchange, more revenue for other local businesses selling us the fuel, ration, consumables etc. Plus of course more revenue for the state by way of taxes and other duties.
Isn’t this a win – win situation for all Guyanese. Why then are we being told that log exports by foreign nationals is good for us and the best thing since sliced bread?
Yours faithfully,
Howard Bulkan
