Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has asked localities nationwide tofocus on forestry restructuring by improving productivity, quality andvalue of forest production; increasing added value for processed wood;boosting the forestry value chain and expanding the wood market.

Deputy PM Hai made the request while chairing a meeting of theNational Steering Committee on the Forest Protection and DevelopmentPlan for 2011-2020 in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lakon April 9.

Hai urged localities to strictlyimplement forest planting project to replace damaged areas whilereshuffling forestry enterprises and rolling out measures to prevent andfight forest fires.

He also requested additionalefforts in forest protection and strengthened state management overforest land, adding that all violations are to be strictly handled.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, lastyear, almost all targets for forest conservation and development werefulfilled, with forestry production growth reaching 7.09 percent andexports hitting 6.54 billion USD.

As many as 2.037million hectares of forest are currently under protection. During thefirst three months of this year, 3,941 law violations were detected, adecrease of 41.9 percent over the same period last year.

Total damaged forest areas amounted to 31.92 hectares, a drop ofnearly 569 hectares from 2014. Meanwhile, localities nationwide planted13,416 additional hectares of forest, completing 6 percent of the yearlytarget and equivalent to 167 percent of last years’ figure.

As the end of 2014, the forest stocktaking project for 2013-2016 wascompleted, revealing a total recorded forest areas of over 2.5 millionhectares in the five Central Highlands localities, including 2.2 millionhectares of natural areas and more than 313 million hectares of plantedforests. Total wood reserve was 302 million cubic metres.-VNA