Russia (bbabo.net), - The implementation of priority investment projects in the field of forest development, in which almost 710 billion rubles were invested, led to the emergence of 41,000 new jobs, reports Roslesinforg. In total, over the past 13 years, more than 2 trillion rubles have been directed to the industry, the annual volume of funds raised amounted to 100-200 million rubles, notes Elena Razumova, Advisor to the President of the Center for Strategic Research.
The payback period for such investments ranges from five years in the sawmill sector to ten or more years in the production of pulp, explained Pavel Karnaukh, president of the Russian Forest National Timber Association. According to him, the rapid rise in prices for finished products, which occurred last year, helped to shorten the payback period, which has only increased in recent decades as the ruble depreciated. This spurred investors to actively engage in forest projects and create new jobs.
Companies in the Irkutsk Region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory are currently implementing seven priority investment projects each, five in Karelia. In total, there are 164 such projects, they are represented in 33 regions, Roslesinforge added.
"The mechanization and automation of the forest industry has led to the fact that in ten years the number of people employed in it has decreased from 1 million to 600 thousand people," Razumova cited the data. "Therefore, the return of 41 thousand people to the industry is a very serious achievement." According to Karnauch, the equipment at the modern production of the timber industry complex requires a high level of qualification from the workers. What determines, among other things, the size of their salary. It can reach up to 150 thousand rubles a month.
“The return on investment in the timber industry depends on the specific project, the timing can vary greatly,” Karnaukh specified. “This is influenced by both internal factors: capacity utilization, the cost of raw materials, the size of the wage fund, logistics costs, and external ones: market prices , global demand, industry regulation, exchange rates, since most of the modern equipment is purchased abroad."
Up to 20% of investments in the timber industry go to logging, the highest capital intensity of pulp production, Razumova notes, it takes about 40% of all investments in the industry. Over the past eight years, the forest industry has shown higher growth rates than the economy as a whole, which allowed it to actively attract investment.
The development of forest projects allows to revive the economy of the whole region, Karnaukh adds. According to him, every job created in the field of harvesting or processing wood means the emergence of seven more vacancies in other organizations - at subcontractors or in the settlements where workers live. Forest entrepreneurs build and maintain schools, hospitals, and other social institutions. They give orders for transport workers, logistics companies, machine builders, machine tool manufacturers, metallurgists, and power engineers. All this also becomes a contribution to GDP, which is not directly monitored by the results of the forest industry.
“Many forest settlements were historically formed from logging enterprises and lumber camps, and then grew into cities,” he adds. infrastructure in the forests, which is also used by local residents".
According to Roslesinforg, 112 priority forest investment projects have already been fully implemented, in 52 cases companies are still creating production facilities. The main products that are produced at such enterprises are various types of sawmill products, plywood, chipboard, OSB, CLT, MDF, glued laminated timber, wood fuel pellets, wood briquettes, paper, cardboard and furniture.
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