Evaluación de las asociaciones forestales y madereras de Perú: capacidades y necesidades organizativas actuales

The Peruvian forestry sector has suffered a severe setback in recent years. Since the intervention and seizure of significant volumes of illegal timber in 2015 and 2016, and the alerts issued in the countries of destination such as the USA, the demand for wood products from Peru has decreased considerably. Data from the Peruvian custom services show that timber exports in January have fallen by 20% compared to January 20161 while reported by theNational Statistical Office (INEI) volumes in primary timber processing decreased near to 35% in the same period2. Thus, not only timber exporters are in a challenging situation, but the entire Peruvian timber industry.
According to the INEI 26,605 companies of the timber and furniture industry are officially registered. Of these, 96.5% are micro enterprises, 3.2% are small enterprises and 0.3% are medium-sized and large enterprises. Additionally, more than 7,000 companies linked to forestry and timber extraction activities, mainly in the Amazon region, are officially recognized by the National Tax Office3. However, these numbers
only represent the formal economy and it is widely known that most enterprises operate in the informal economy.
The database of Peru´s national registry office contains information about a wide diversity of forest and timber associations, with current records of at least 603 organizations.
68% of these are identified as industry organizations, less than 20% are registered as forest management organizations, and 13% are registered as organizations representing carpenters. Nevertheless, not all these organizations are necessarily involved in or related to the timber value chain. A more in-depth analysis would be necessary to identify the status of all these numerous organizations, e.g. their location, their specific objective their direct relation with the sector, as well as the exact number of members.