Myanmar’s remunerative timber trade continues to be involved in guilt and corruption
Myanmar’s remunerative timber trade continues to be involved in guilt and corruption, as well as systematic nonpayment value legion bucks by firms mercantilism teak wood to European markets, consistent with an OCCRP report.
Produced by the Environmental investigatory Agency (EIA), the paper reveals however non-public companies exporting timber bought from the state-run Myanma Timber Enterprise (MTE) have long been overstating how processed their teak is thus on lawlessly evade or cut back taxation.
This system of trade miss-invoicing has by artificial means reduced the price of shipments sure for European markets, argues the report, with the first principle in Slovenia, HF Italia in Italy, Houthandel Boogaerdt within the European country, and WOB Timber in German enclosed among the EU firms that have received and benefitted from this lawlessly harvested timber.
It has also, of course, defrauded one amongst Asia’s poorest countries of legion bucks in tax revenue, which is ironic given Union of Burma Teak, the questionable “King of Hardwoods,” is primarily used for the luxury yacht market, providing the decks on which the world’s wealthiest voters will relax.
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Yet this can be solely the newest revelation touch Myanmar’s timber sector, which has for years been destroying the country’s forests at an exceptional rate: the EIA paper claims an area roughly the size of Finland and Slovakia combined was lost between 2001 and 2019. Teak demand has driven this staggering deforestation, with embezzled work and importing feeding international markets.
The report’s temporal arrangement is additionally important, returning within the when maths of Union of Burma’s Feb military coup, that has hamstrung the young democracy six years after the military rule had apparently ended. Since the country’s economic alleviation in the 1990s, the military has greatly enriched itself by exerting management over extractive industries, particularly the timber trade.
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That has taken many approaches: taking a cut of illegal logging and timber trafficking from northern Myanmar to China, taking bribes from non-public timber companies in exchange for work concessions, shipping “tainted timber” out of military-owned ports, and even, several believe, confiscating thousands of heaps of embezzled timber per annum solely to stockpile them for personal resale.
Furthermore, whereas the democratic opposition took various steps when 2015 to combat illegal logging and cut back overall deforestation, there are signs the comeback of military rule means that the betterment of those unsustainable and illegal practices.
For while the US already imposed targeted sanctions on senior military figures and military-connected logging firms last month, and also the EU is due to impose similar sanctions on Monday, the massive Chinese and Indian markets will likely remain receptive to Myanmar’s tainted timber.