Forest lobby fights for trade spotlight

By PAM GRAHAM

New Zealand is leading an international forest industry lobby to bolster the position of forest products in the Doha round on free-trade negotiations.

Forest Industries Council chief executive Stephen Jacobi is in Geneva this week with industry representatives from Canada and the United States to present a position paper supported by Australia's National Association of Forest Industries, the American Forest & Paper Association, the Forest Products Association of Canada, and the Paper Manufacturers Association of South Africa. He said a Chilean industry association had also pledged support.

The paper seeks the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers, clearer anti-dumping measures and rules to address subsidies in the forest, wood and paper products industries.

Jacobi estimated that tariffs cost the New Zealand forest industry $40 million a year, and non-tariff barriers amount to $175 million.

A draft paper from the Doha round's non-agriculture market access group did not do justice to the industry and the lobby was acting now to get more favourable treatment in the behind-the-scenes work before the round's ministerial meeting in Cancun in September.

The group aimed to recruit Governments to its cause. Jacobi said the New Zealand Government had helped to organise meetings during his visit to Geneva this week.

He and the US and Canadian representatives would meet ambassadors from countries with forest industries and officials from the World Trade Organisation.

Tariffs were the big issue for the industry group and in particular it was concerned about so-called accelerate tariffs, which rise when wood products are processed more.

Jacobi said New Zealand had an expanding plantation timber resource and one reason there was not enough capacity to process it was that tariffs were higher for value-added products.

"If we get the access, we get the investment in value-added processing, and then we'll get the return," he said.

New Zealand accounted for about 1 per cent of world forest trade and had 8.8 per cent of the Asia Pacific market.

It was more reliant on exports than other countries because of its small domestic market.

"What we are saying to the WTO and our Governments is we think that liberalisation of forest trade is absolutely critical to the continuing expansion of our industry."