Public forests could give more benefit

“Activities of the most forest enterprises, which manage public forests, and of the Directorate General of State Forests coordinating their activities are not sufficiently effective,“ says Deputy Auditor General Viktoras Švedas. “If the number of forest enterprises, which incur losses, keeps on growing further, they may not be able to carry out functions assigned to them,“ adds he.   The audit report evaluating the effectiveness of the management of State-owned forests points out that the Lithuanian Forestry Policy and Its Implementation Strategy has not been updated since it was issued in 2002, therefore it does not take into account substantial changes in Lithuanian economy,  which  have

occured during the last eight years. Furthermore, as Government institutions still have not made the final decision on the optimum number of forest enterprises, the objective of the Strategy is not yet implemented: to reorganize and optimize State regulation system of public forestry. Auditors pointed out that directions of the National Forestry Policy had to be established by the Seimas; however, in 2002 they were established by the Minister of Environment, who thus exceeded his authority.

The NAOL noted that Lithuanian forest enterprises use their resources with different effectiveness, therefore the price of timber sold by different forest enterprises differs by more than a third, and costs of its preparation differ by up to 42 per cent.

The National Audit Office also found out that information system “Forest accounting“, development and introduction of which used LTL 2.5 million, was used insufficiently effectively. Although the information system was started to be used in the end of 2004, however, the Directorate General of State Forests, which commissioned the system does not yet use it, and forest enterprises use not all the functions of this system.

The NAOL says that cadastral measurements of public forest land lots and registering them on behalf of the State, as well as transferring them to be managed in trust to forest enterprises fall behind schedule. If forest land and forest value is not accounted for in financial accounts, it will not be clear how much and how valuable property the State has.

The National Audit Office gave recommendations to the Government to draft amendments of legislation ensuring that State-owned forests and land would be accounted for in financial accounts; it was also recommended to amend the Forest Law and establish directions of forestry policy. It was recommended to approve the forestry strategy, which would cover issues of development of management of forests and increasing of efficiency of activities, as well as to make decisions on optimum number of forest enterprises. The Ministry of Environment was recommended to evaluate the coordination and control of forest enterprises conducted by the Directorate General of State Forests. The Directorate General of State Forests was instructed to correct scope of cutting and selling of timber according to trends in forestry market and to start using the information system “Forest accounting“.

Public audit report is available in Lithuanian:
Audit report Activities of Public Forestry