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Congo plans to cancel Danzer Group, Sodefor and Safbois’s logging contracts
By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:October 8, 2008
Get CEOWORLD Magazine digital monthly version. special- Top Capital Cities for a business Traveler, # Interview with Minister of Tourism of Greece. 1 Issues Subscription= $1 Only, 10 Issues Subscription= $5 Only. Grab your copy now!!!!Democratic Republic of Congo will cancel more than two-thirds of its logging contracts due to under a World Bank-back initiative to reduce corruption in the forestry sector, according to the Central African country’s environment minister.
As reported by Reuters, Environment Minister Jose Endundu told journalists Monday that DRC would likely cancel 110 out 156 logging contracts signed mostly during the country’s civil war (1998-2003) or under the corrupt regime that followed. Companies will have 15 days to appeal. The central African state is home to the world’s second-largest tropical forest after the Amazon, and the government is also concerned illegal logging is depleting a valuable resource and damaging the environment.
Three companies — a subsidiary of Germany’s Danzer Group; Portugal’s Sodefor; and Safbois, an American-Belgian conglomerate — are reported to account for two-thirds of concessions in the country. DRC is home to the bulk of the Congo Basin forest, the world’s second largest rainforest after the Amazon, but the region has been plagued by illegal logging in recent years.
Endundu said that while the cancellation of logging contracts will reduce the area under concession from 22 million hectares to seven million, annual timber exports could climb from 200,000 cubic meters to 700,000 cubic meters. “I don’t think this is in the interests of the Congolese government,”Von Gagern said by phone from Reutlingen, Germany. “I am very confident the government will see what the right thing to do is.”
DR Congo is also looking to expand the area of forest under protection, for which it hopes to secure compensation through emerging markets for forest carbon.
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