960416

Duty free import

of timber under

study, says Zardari

NADEEM MALIK

ISLAMABAD: The duty free import of timber is being considered besides establishing a Foreign Environment Fund (FEF) to generate resources for environment conservation in Pakistan. It was disclosed by the Chairman, Environment Protection Agency (EPA), Asif Ali Zardari MNA, while talking to Financial Writers Association (FWA).

He said, deforestation is a major problem in Pakistan and we are striving hard to increase the forest area as well as protecting the existing one. He said forest land in Pakistan is just 4 million hectares which is just 4 percent of the total area and far less than the international standards of 15 percent. He said, we need to increase this area to 18 million hectares to meet international standards, a very demanding task.

During his 14 months period as chairman EPA, despite his all out efforts he succeeded in increasing the forests size just by half a million, he said adding with a budget of Rs 90 million it's a big achievement.

Zardari, who was flanked by the Secretary Commerce Salman Farooqui and several other officials of Ministry of Commerce and EPA, said, we are not just trying to increase the forest area in the country, but we are also making concerted efforts to protect the existing ones too.

Elaborating the case of Ziarat forests, he said, we have successfully completed a Rs 60 million project with the help of WAPDA and Sui Southern Gas Pipeline. The people of the area have been provided gas cylinders and free burners to use the gas as an alternate fuel for cooking and heating instead of cutting the precious trees. He said Sui Southern is also establishing a gas pipeline to the area and this project will be completed by June 30, 1996. He said cutting of trees is totally banned and restrictions have been imposed on Afghan Transit Trade (ATT) to check the "Timber Mafia". The EPA Cha_irman said, in order to prevent wood cutting and theft of grown-up trees we are considering to allow the duty free import of timber to reduce its prices in the domestic market to make it unfeasible for the Timber Racket to cut the tree and sell it at higher prices in the market. He said we are negotiating the pros and cons of this proposal with the IMF and subject to their approval it will be allowed very soon.

He said for increasing the forest area we are not using the cultivable land instead waste land is being revitalized, although we are encouraging commercial farming, he contended.

He said Independent Power Projects (IPPs) have been motivated to cultivate forests and Hubco alone has planted saplings on 12 thousand acres. He said, the Forest Departments in the provinces are also being revamped with the help of World Bank. The forest officers are being sent abroad for training and modern techniques are being introduced.

Zardari said NGO's participation in the environment conservation is being enhanced and few of them with the foreign assistance are doing good job. He said at present 580 NGOs supported either by the government or the donors are engaged in the EPA operations.

He said, we are diversifying our efforts in different sectors and waste management projects to smoke-emission devices in the vehicles and to check the industrial pollution. He said Pre-Shipment Inspection firms (PSI) are being contacted to issue a certificate that vehicles coming into the country are fitted with the environment protection devices. Without this certificate all other formalities will be restricted, he added. We are trying to convert the government vehicles to CNG instead of Petrol and Diesel. We have contacted APTMA to motivate textile mills to use environment protection devices and to some extent we are successful, he added.

EPA chairman said, in Faisalabad 1500 acres of land is being given free of cost to Textile Processing Industry to shift their plants out of the city. For this purpose 500 acres of land has been provided by the Government of Punjab , he added.

He said, we have undertaken special projects to tackle the pollution created by tanneries and other highly polluting industries and in 8 cities waste management projects are being initiated.

Zardari said, besides doing all this we are facing acute resource constraints and are bound to improve the environmental standards too. If we fail to achieve the standard it will not be possible to export any item from Pakistan after 10 to 15 years under ISO-9000. He said to meet this challenge we are motivating the multinationals in Pakistan to diversify their environmental funds towards Pakistan. He said many developed countries like Japan, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, British and Swiss are also helping us a lot in this resource starved sector. Zardari said that in order to generate more resources from abroad we are establishing a Foreign Environment Fund (FEF) for which Government of Pakistan will give matching grants.