On the afternoon of December 27, in Hanoi, the Department of Forestry, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) held a conference to review the forestry sector in 2023 and deploy tasks for 2024.
According to the Department of Forestry, in 2023, the forestry sector will carry out its tasks in the face of many difficulties and challenges such as: changes in weather and climate; conflicts in some countries affecting the export market for wood products in particular and agricultural, forestry and fishery products in general, etc.
However, since the beginning of the year, the forestry sector has implemented synchronous solutions for direction and management, closely following the assigned targets and tasks to organize and implement. Thanks to that, the forestry sector has achieved positive results, contributing to the overall growth of the agriculture and rural development sector.
Accordingly, in 2023, in the field of afforestation, the whole country planted about 250,000 hectares of forest, reaching 102% of the 2023 plan. The forest coverage rate reached 42.02%, achieving the set plan target. Total revenue from forest environmental services in 2023 reached 4,130.40 billion VND.
Regarding forestry exports, it is estimated to reach 14.390 billion USD, down 15.8% compared to 2022. The decline is due to many unstable market fluctuations, at the same time, being affected by the Russia-Ukraine political conflict; consumers in the US and EU markets are tightening spending on non-essential products, including wood products. However, the trade surplus of forestry products is still estimated at 12.199 billion USD.
Notably, in 2023, marking a very important milestone, for the first time in Vietnam in the forestry sector, the procedures were completed to successfully transfer the amount of carbon emission reduction of 10.3 million tons to the Forestry Carbon Partnership Fund through the World Bank (WB) at a unit price of 5 USD/ton of CO2, equivalent to 51.5 million USD.
To date, the Vietnam Forest Protection and Development Fund has received the first payment from the World Bank (WB) of 41.2 million USD and has disbursed the entire amount so that the provinces can urgently make payment plans for forest owners in 6 provinces in the North Central region.
By 2024, the Forestry sector has set the following goals: The national forest coverage rate will remain stable at 42.02%; the growth rate of forestry production value will reach 5.0 - 5.5%; forest environmental service revenue will be 3,200 billion VND; forest product export value will be 17.5 billion USD, etc.
At the conference, many delegates made recommendations to overcome existing difficulties. In particular, Director of Tam Dao National Park - Do Thanh Hai proposed that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Forestry Department in the coming time coordinate with localities to help the National Park solve difficulties in planning work.
In addition, Deputy Director of the Forest Protection Department of Region 1 Nguyen Van Trang said that there are still many potential risks of forest encroachment in the context of limited forest rangers' human resources, and at the same time, the vehicles provided so far are old and dilapidated, significantly affecting the work of forest protection and development. Therefore, Deputy Director of the Department Nguyen Van Trang proposed to add more staff and new equipment to the forest rangers of Region 1 to better fulfill their mission requirements.
Speaking at the conference, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Quoc Tri said that 2023 is a year with many difficulties and challenges for the forestry sector. However, the results achieved have contributed to helping the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development complete the set tasks.
Entering 2024, Deputy Minister Nguyen Quoc Tri suggested that the forestry sector should pay attention to the work of legal documents in order to have timely promulgation of policy mechanisms. At the same time, based on the forecast that the conflict situation will continue to last, the forest product export market is still unpredictable, and the input and output factors of production still fluctuate, in order to set specific targets for forest product exports, closely following the practical situation. In addition, the Deputy Minister also suggested that the forestry sector should strengthen the implementation of digital transformation to help the sector grasp timely information on forest fluctuations, forestry production, etc. /.
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