MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2020) Russia is working to create a unique forest industry management system, which will be unparalleled anywhere else in the world, the director of Federal forest inventory agency Roslesinforg, Pavel Chaschin, told Sputnik.
In late September, President Vladimir Putin ordered a large-scale reform of the national forest industry. The goals are to eradicate illegal logging, as well as boost and modernize the forest industry. The automation of the state forest industry register is expected to become a key tool in these efforts. Roslesinforg is currently working to modernize state timber register LesEGAIS.
"LesEGAIS has no analogues in the world. No one in the world, except Russia, controls the turnover of timber within the country and its exports. Surprisingly, until December 2013, the Russian state did not put forward any requirements for the owners of timber in relation to recordkeeping, purchase and sale," Chaschin said.
Any cut tree that got on a public road, he continued, was legalized automatically, as law enforcement and supervisory authorities simply did not have the right to ask questions about the timber, its origin or owner. Many things have since fundamentally changed, according to the forestry agency's chief.
LesEGAIS is set to become a part of the federal state information system of the forest industry. The system will help the state to rationally plan forest resources and effectively manage them. Businesses, in turn, will have clear and transparent rules for working in the industry, and citizens will get accessible information about forest resources, according to Chaschin.
As part of the national program "Digital economy," the Russian government has allocated 6.8 billion rubles ($89.7 million) for the creation of this system, which is set to become operational by January 1, 2023.
