Evaluarea eficienţei economice a comercializării masei lemnoase prin contracte pe termen lung, cu o aplicaţie la fag [ Evaluation of economic efficiency of marketing timber by long-term contracts, with an application to beech]

Abstract

In Romania long term contracts for the selling of timber from public forests have been implemented in 2002 for a period of 10 years as a support for investments in wood processing companies. Currently there is a public debate about their efficiency considering their impact on the concentration of timber demand in the hands of the companies which have accessed such contracts. In this context the paper analysis the economic efficiency of the implementation of long term contracts in the Forest Department Suceava considering the transactions of a processing company specialized on beech timber. Methodologically the paper uses two sets of data: 167 stands sold based on long-term contracts in the period 2009-2013 and 1725 stands sold in public actions from 2009 to 2011. The second set of data has been used for a regression analysis as to identify the relation between the stumpage prices obtain in public auctions and the stand characteristics seen as explanatory variables. The resulted regression model was employed to predict the stumpage value for those stands sold via long-term contracts in the scenario they have been sold by public auction. The results show that for the analysed period the prices obtained from long-term contracts have been 32% higher compared with the prices from public auction. Nevertheless the results are interpreted in the particular context provided by the limited competition on the beech market and the decrease of the timber prices brought by the 2009 financial crises. The findings have policy implications for the future development and use of long-term contracts.

Keywords

• long-term contracts
• stumpage auctions
• timber appraisal
• market concentration
• timber selling policies