Forest Complex of the Far Eastern Federal District: Development Trends in 2022–2023

Abstract

An assessment is made of the impact of ongoing sanctions shocks, as well as internal export restrictions on the national and Far Eastern forest complexes. It is shown that the crisis of 2022 only aggravated the situation previously formed by institutional innovations in the forest regions of the Far East. The crisis did not have a catastrophic impact on the state of timber industry enterprises, which managed to both partially maintain external demand and partially offset the ban on wood exports by supplying the domestic market. In 2023 compared to 2022, despite the increase in profitability from the supply of products to the foreign market as a result of the rising dollar exchange rate, improving conditions in the Chinese market due to the easing of covid restrictions, the negative effect of sanctions shocks (market closures, restrictions in logistics, reduction in imports of equipment and materials) have intensified. As a result, there was an increase in losses of enterprises due to delays in the transportation of timber cargo, an increase in transport costs, the cost and delivery time of imported spare parts, which led to a decrease in production activity in the main forest regions of the Far Eastern Federal District, which has negative social consequences, especially in remote settlements. In conditions of low population density, the development of domestic demand for timber products in the Far East, even with government support, is uncompetitive in comparison with external demand, which is increasingly oriented toward the monopsony Chinese market