Tanzania's Forests Products Export Registers Impressive Growth

 By STAFF REPORTER 

THE government, through the Tanzania Forest Service (TFS) has succeeded to elevate the county’s forests products export to the tune of at least 16.5 percent, from 356,593 Metric Tons (MT) in 2021/22 to 426,805 MT during 2022/23.

The exported items in question include the Engineered Wood Products (EWPs), such as polywood, marine boards and laminated boards, among others.

According to the report unveiled recently by the TFS's Conservation Commissioner, Professor Dos Santos Silayo, the positive development in the country’s forest sector have been attained due to a proffessional manner to which the local factories have managrd to embark on a fresh chapter of manufacturing diverse wood products, instead of exporting the relevant raw materials.

He expressed that, during 2022/2023, a total of 1,940,000MT of timber was harvested at different healthier forests across the country, especially from the tree estates.

“Available statistics reads that, during a period from 2022 and 2023, a total of 47,491MT of the engineered wood products were exported to numerous countries, which is equivalent to an increase of 66.6 percent in comparison to the 15,876MT that was exported during 2021/2022,” he detailed.

The commissioner added that the government was continuing to implement a strategic plan to assist the local forest factories to process and attaining additional value with an eye to export semi-processed and finished products.

“The factories under the strategy’s vision include the small-scale ones that deal with sawmilling, and those based on production of engineered wood products like marine boards and veneer, and the other factories that engage into production of briquettes,” he revealed.

Together with that, the Don added that the other factories under the strategy’s focus are those based on manufacturing of papers and pillars.

“ As of now, the country has a total of 4,300 factories that engage into manufacturing of forests related products, whereby most of the sector’s  stakeholders are getting the raw materials from the state-established forests and from the private-owned tree estates,” he infomed.

And currently, according to him, TFS is serving a total of 11,670 stakeholders.

Moreover, he informed that as part to cement performance of the sector, during the 2022/23 fiscal year, TFS had managed to establish one major tree farm in Makere area of Kasulu-Kigoma, occupying at least 65,000 hectare.

“Apart from establishing the tree estate, we also managed to expand two farms, including Mtibwa (12,000 hactare) and Pagale range and Longuza at 400 hactares extent,” he expressed.

With the impressive initiative, he disclosed that during the past fiscal year, TFS also managed to produce a total of 25.9 tons of tree seeds and planted a total of 32,735,653 seedlings of numerous tree varieties at different areas of the 24 public tree farms available across the country.

Tanzania holds at least 48.1million hectares of forests, equivalent to 54 percent of the county’s area, whereby the government reserved forests area is 465 hectares, including 24 tree plantations,23  natural environmental conservation areas, and 20 beekeeping reaserves.

Tanzania Forest Service (TFS) is a semi-autonomous government Executive Agency whose establishment is supported by the Executive Agency Act (Cap. 245 Revised Edition 2009), the National Forest and Beekeeping Policies adopted in March 1998 and administered through The Forest Act (No. 14 of 2002) and Beekeeping Act (No. 15 of 2002) which provides legal framework for the management of forests and bee resources.