China smuggles Timber from Mozambique,The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has revealed.

EIA says  Mozambican politicians and Chinese traders are  systematically involved in timber smuggling and illegal logging according to its investigations.

Of all the Mozambican timber exported to China last year, 48% was thought to have come from illegal logging, resulting in a loss of tens of millions of dollars a year in tax revenues, the agency said according to BBC

A couple of reports have highlighted China’s role in illegal logging and timber smuggling in a range of African countries; these include:

• from 2000-03, exports of timber from Liberia to China rose faster than any other African country, reaching a peak of 600,000 cubic metres of logs a year. Accusations that this trade was funding the brutal regime of Liberian President Charles Taylor and
fomenting regional conflict led to the United Nations imposing unprecedented sanctions on trade in timber from Liberia in 2004;

• illegal logging in Tanzania in the period 2004-05 cost the Government $58 million a year in lost revenue. China imported 10 times more timber from Tanzania than was recorded in Tanzania’s export records, indicating rampant smuggling;

• in 2008, Sierra Leone’s Government banned timber exports, complaining of indiscriminate plundering of forests by Chinese and other foreign companies. After the ban, a series of seizures were made of timber in containers bound for China.Sino Africa Reports

Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries.And generally most of African countries like Gabon, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea ,Mozambique among others  have few wood processing industries and therefore export most of their timber to China,and other developed countries.

By UP