Poland to limit timber imports from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus

Poland intends to introduce limitations on timber exports from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It has already started negotiations on the issue with its eastern partners, said Polish environment minister Stanislaw Zelichowski on the Polish radio on Thursday.

"After recent storms that fell a large amounts of trees, we have got surpluses of timber," he explained. In the Pisska dense near the Mazur lakes alone the storms fell and broke 4 million cubic meters of trees on an area of 32,000 hectares.

The Polish party seeks to achieve voluntary limitations of timber deliveries during the talks, without retaliatory sanctions on imports of Polish furniture and other timber industry products, Zelichowski said.

If an agreement is not reached, "import will be slowed down anyway, because of introducing different border duties", he pointed out.

The Russian trade delegation in Warsaw said that last year Russian companies had supplied Poland with round, saw and other kinds of timber to the sum of $14 million, while Poland's furniture exports to Russia had amounted to $17 million.