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ndonesia has moved ahead with its plan to require imported timber and timber products to comply with the local legality-certification scheme and expects the new policy to be implemented as soon as early next year.

The Trade Ministry'€™s director general for foreign trade, Partogi Pangaribuan, said his office was finalizing the regulation and would issue it in September.

The rule would provide a three-month transition period to allow importers to adjust to the new arrangements, he said, adding that the certification scheme could be fully implemented by early next year.

'€œWe want to ensure that timber products entering our country are legally sourced, as ours are. This can be traced through the legality certification,'€ Partogi told reporters on Friday.

At present, Indonesia'€™s timber imports are primarily made up of furniture from several countries including China, Thailand, Italy and Norway.

Indonesia, home to the world'€™s third-biggest tropical forest area after the Amazon and Congo basins, launched a timber-legality verification system (SVLK) in 2003 in a move to fight against illegal logging and later made it mandatory in 2010.

The SVLK certificates guarantee that local timber and timber products are legally sourced.

In September last year, Indonesia sealed a voluntary partnership agreement (VPA) with the European Union (EU), which recognized that all timber and timber products from the country complied with the bloc'€™s timber regulations put into effect earlier.

Through such recognition, local timber and timber products shipped to the 28-member bloc, which is Indonesia'€™s third-biggest timber customer, are exempted from mandatory due diligence therefore substantially reducing business costs.

The Trade Ministry expects that the deal will boost Indonesian timber exports by up to US$2 billion this year.

One of the world'€™s major timber exporters, Indonesia earned approximately $10 billion from exporting its timber and timber products overseas last year.

In a recent move, Indonesia has begun to assess the viability of sealing another VPA on the timber trade with Australia to boost exports of its forestry products, particularly furniture and paper.

Partogi added that Indonesia was not drafting the new rule with the intention of restricting imports, but more in order to strike a balance between what was required by local timber producers and timber imports.

'€œWe aim to seek convergence between our legality system and similar legality systems implemented by our trading partners,'€ he explained.

Earlier, trade officials said that once the certification requirement on imported timber applied, the imports would no longer need pre-shipment inspection,
resulting in less scrutiny before shipment. The requirement will be realized through a mutual recognition agreement (MRA) on the timber trade.

Indonesian Furniture Industry and Handicraft Association (Asmindo) chairman Ambar Tjahyono responded positively to the plan, saying it would be important as Indonesia needed to ensure all of its imported timber and timber products met the same legality standards that were imposed on Indonesian exports.

'€œSelling legally sourced timber and equally buying legally sourced timber will improve our leverage in international trade,'€ he said.

'€”JP/Linda Yulisman