By KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The largest purchases of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) Forests of Ukraine in 2023 were services for the purchase of fuel and equipment, while forestry enterprises spent more than UAH 3.5 billion on timber harvesting alone, Director General of the enterprise Yuriy Bolokhovets said on Facebook.
“Before the reform, each forestry enterprise decided for itself how much and for what work to pay contractors. It was a rather opaque story. Unified services and price caps were introduced in the SOE. Starting next year, the procurement of services will be completely transferred to ProZorro. Like all our other procurements,” he wrote.
Bolokhovets said that the purchase of fuel is one of the most important consumables of the state-owned enterprise, since all production processes – forest planting, care, protection, procurement, delivery – require fuel. Its consumption can be reduced by updating the technology park and expanding the network of forest roads.
“Delivery of wood from a cutting site with a road and without it means absolutely different fuel costs,” he said, adding that in 2024, the state-owned enterprise will introduce online monitoring of transport movements in the forest to track routes, distances and control actual costs.
Bolokhovets said that in 2022, Forests of Ukraine transferred more than 800 pieces of equipment to the military. Many forestry enterprises do not even have the equipment to deliver firewood to the population.
The director general of the enterprise also included the construction of forest roads, the purchase of equipment for growing seedlings, tools for tillage, tags for marking wood, tires, fire-fighting equipment and land management among the top 10 purchases.
“The lion’s share of the enterprise’s costs, as you can see, is associated exclusively with current production activities, and only a small part with development. To nullify the already small investments in forest development is to deprive the country of the future. And forestry without investment will cease after some time bring the profit that we saw this year,” the general director of Forests of Ukraine said.
