Chinese Flooring Firms Still Using Smuggled Wood

Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 21, 2009--An environmental watchdog agency said Wednesday that smugglers are still supplying Chinese companies, including flooring companies, with illegally imported wood from Myanmar, even though overall imports have declined sharply.

The British-based group Global Witness, in a report issued Wednesday, called on Chinese and Myanmar authorities to step up efforts to stop illegal logging in northern Myanmar and crack down on illicit cross-border trade.

Smugglers are still supplying Chinese companies that export the wood to Europe, America and throughout the world, Global Witness said.

"Clearly action taken by authorities in China and Burma to combat illegal logging in Kachin state has had a significant positive impact," Global Witness quotes its forest policy expert, Jon Buckrell, saying. "But they should do more to close down the remaining industry, which is almost wholly reliant on the illegal timber supply from Burma."

The new report, "A Disharmonious Trade," said trade data showed that imports of logs and sawed wood from Myanmar to China fell by more than 70 percent between 2005 and 2008, confirming a trend found by the group's own field investigations.

But smugglers use "bribery, false papers, transportation at night and avoiding checkpoints" to get around the restrictions on sending the wood to China, the report said.

Global Witness said its researchers had visited flooring companies on China's east coast to gauge the availability of timber from Myanmar, and found widespread use of teak from Myanmar, along with other high value species such as black walnut.

Global Witness said its investigators were told by 13 of the 14 firms visited that it was still possible for them to obtain timber from Myanmar despite the import restrictions, and that several admitted that their supplies were obtained through smuggling.

The report said the Chinese companies export worldwide, including to the United States and Europe. It said some U.S. based companies advertise wood flooring from Myanmar, although under a U.S. law amended by Congress last year, the Lacey Act, it is illegal to import illegally obtained plants and their products, including timber and wood products.

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