The future of wood product's trade and industry in Iran

The last two decades consisted of a steady decrease in timber production levels in Iran in order to preserve the Hyrcanian forest as the only source of industrial wood. Consequently, under the so-called “the Forests’ Breathing Plan” in 2017 the Islamic Parliament of Iran stipulated that any wood exploitation from Iranian forests will be prohibited beginning in 2020. In order to respond to increasing wood demand and the cessation of the domestic production of natural-forest wood, the future prospect for the production and trade of wood commodities must be assessed. The main objective of this study was to predict the monetary values of domestic production, imports, exports, and prices of wood products in Iran through 2030 under the Forests’ Breathing Plan. The assessment was performed using the Global Forest Products Model (GFPM) and for three categories of wood products: unprocessed wood, semi-processed wood products and pulp and paper. The GFPM is a partial equilibrium model that forecasts wood demand based on the growth rate of gross domestic product in each country and predicts price by establishing equilibrium between demand and supply. The results indicate that the growth of domestic production will be larger for the second category of wood products than for pulp and paper. The import of unprocessed wood will reach nearly USD 200 million in 2030 and the production and import values of semi-processed wood products will increase 2.2 and 2.6 times, respectively, compared to 2015. Nevertheless, the total trade balance of wood products will deteriorate by 91% for Iran. Compared to pulp and paper, the increase in the price of the unprocessed and semi-processed wood will be greater. Overall, the global position of Iran’s trade and production of wood products will not improve significantly except for the import of unprocessed and semi-processed wood during the period examined.