Silva Federation: Romsilva activity, blocked by two normative acts

Romsilva cannot exploit more than 1.5 million cubic meters of wood mass, with an estimated value of 600 million lei, because of two normative acts that block the company's activity, says the Silva Federation, in a press release sent to the Editor yesterday.

The quoted source states: "In the middle of winter, when citizens need wood to heat their homes, bureaucratic procedures and legislative anomalies block the forestry sector! The first normative act is Law 347/2023, (...), which introduces, without any evaluation of the economic and social impact, a provision according to which the forestry management comes into force after its publication in the Official Gazette of Romania together with the order of minister for approval. Forest management is the basic study in forest management, ecologically based, with technical - organizational, legal and economic content, without which no silvaculture work can be carried out. Because of this bureaucratic and counterproductive regulation, 25 forestry districts out of the 312 within Romsilva (...) cannot harvest wood from an area of approximately 150,000 hectares of forest because, since the entry into force of Law no. 347/2023 , no forest management was published in the Official Gazette of Romania, being a delay of almost 3 months, during which neither the population can be supplied with firewood, even though we are in the middle of winter, nor the processing industry, which brings economic added value to this renewable resource of strategic importance".

The employees' representatives claim that the volume of wood that should have entered the economic circuit and is currently blocked at the 25 forestry bypasses exceeds 515,000 cubic meters, with a value of over 200 million lei. The Silva Federation also points out that the production activity is also blocked by HG no. 236/2023, the application of which leads to the impossibility of harvesting and valorizing wood in a number of 105 state forestry forests out of the existing 312, the blocked resource reaching about 1 million cubic meters of wood, with an estimated value of 400 million lei, blockage that lasts in many cases between 6 and 12 months.

Thus, practically out of the 312 forestry forests belonging to the state, 130 have a blocked resource of 1.5 million cubic meters of wood (out of a total of approximately 9 million cubic meters), with a total value estimated at 600 million.

Because of this, the representatives of the Silva Federation state that this winter and throughout 2024, a considerable number of citizens who heat with firewood will have major difficulties in the supply of wood needed for heating, and from their calculations, based on the data official data provided by the National Institute of Statistics, more than 275,000 households out of the approximately 3.5 million, which are currently dependent on wood heating, will be affected.

In this context, the Silva Federation requests a meeting with Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to explain the whole situation to him and to find solutions to unblock the activity carried out by Romsilva.

The Silva Federation is the representative trade union and professional organization for the forestry sector and has more than 14,000 members throughout the country.