Vietnam's 2.4-billion-dollar furniture industry using Lao logs

Mar 19, 2008, 6:13 GMT

Bangkok - Vietnam's booming wood furniture industry, which earned the country 2.4 billion dollars last year, is smuggling an estimated 500,000 cubic metres of illegal timber from neighbouring Laos, environmental groups disclosed Wednesday.

Vietnam, whose wood furniture exports have increased ten-fold since 2000, has shifted from using illegal timber from Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia over the past seven years, according to investigations conducting by the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) with Indonesian non-governmental organization Telapak.

'Vietnam has an unenviable track record when it comes to dealing in stolen timber,' said the latest EIA/Telapak report on the illegal timber trade in South-east Asia called 'Borderlines - Vietnam's Booming Industry and Timber Smuggling in Mekong Region.

Previous reports have uncovered illegal timber smuggling to Vietnam, from neighbouring Cambodia in the late 1990s, and smuggled shipments from Indonesia in 2003.

Since 2005, Vietnam's furniture industry has increasingly shifted to supplies from neighbouring Laos, one of the world's poorest countries.

'Based on our field observations, EIA/Telepak estimate that at least 500,000 cubic metres of logs move from Laos to Vietnam every year,' said Julian Newman, EIA's head of forests campaign.

The illicit trade in timber between Laos and Vietnam is worth an estimated 250 million dollars a year, and translates into huge export earnings for Vietnam, which now ranks among the world's major wooden furniture exporters.

Thai and Singaporean companies are complicit in the trade, having won dubious logging concessions from Laos, although the communist state has had a ban on raw timber exports for more than a decade.

EIA/Telapak filmed at interview with Thai businessman Prakit Sribussaracum, owner of the LVT International Company, in which he admits to having paid bribes to Lao officials to secure the timbering concession in eastern Laos.

'I pay government people, I pay every step,' Prakit said in a recorded interview with investigators posing as buyers.

The two organizations called for more legislation in Europe and the United States to ban imports of wood furniture that are sourced with illegal wood.

'We would like to see Europe enact some legislation to prevent illegal-sourced timber wood products from entering the market,' said Faith Doherty, EIA's political coordinator.

But she admitted that it was difficult to determine the origin of most wood products, given the 'laundering' process that documentation goes through.

There has been progress made, however, in pressuring Vietnam to improve the transparency of its furniture sourcing, she said.

'At the moment, the European Union has requested informal negotations with Vietnam to try to tackle this problem,' Doherty said. 'Vietnam has an opportunity to step up and show it is willing to address its consumption and its porcessing of the illegal supply its relies on.'