MORNITORING THE IMPACT OF VPA-FLEGT ON SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED TIMBER PROCESSING ENTERPRISES

The VPA-FLEGT agreement came into force on June 1^st, 2019. An agreement between the European Union and the Vietnamese Government to ensure that organizations and households in Vietnam comply with legal timber requirements in the domestic and export market when they join the timber supply chain. The main contents of the Agreement have been specified in the Law on Forestry 2017, and thus, have been institutionalized through decrees and circulars.

In addition to the expected goals of preventing illegal logging and strengthening forest governance, the implementation and compliance of VPA-FLEGT agreement could have negative impacts on small and medium enterprises joining the wood processing industry. Therefore, monitoring and reporting of VPA-FLEGT's impact is a requirement for the implementation of this agreement, providing a basis for proposals to revise and amend related policies and regulations. FERN (Belgian NGO), VNGO-FLEGT Network and SRD, with financial support from the UK Department of International Development (DFID), have developed a Monitoring Framework of VPA-FLEGT's impacts on small and medium-sized timber processing enterprises (SMEs).

On October 30^th, 2019 a training course on impact monitoring and information collection was held at the SRD Office with the participation by representatives from four organizations participating in the VNGO-FLEGT network. In the training course, we agreed on the two expected impacts of VPA-FLEGT on wood processing SMEs, 10 monitoring criteria and 25 monitoring indicators. The two expected impacts are:

1. i)SMEs enhance resilience and be willingness to comply with regulations on legal timber product or timber products provision, and
2. ii)SMEs improve production, access to the market and effective business performance from adaptation and compliance with legal provisions on timber supply.

Participants were guided to collect information for impact monitoring in accordance with the agreed monitoring framework.

After the training, officials from four organizations participating in the VNGO-FLEGT network will collect information from wood processing SMEs in localities, including; Hanoi, Phu Tho, Nghe An, Quang Tri and Dong Nai, etc. The collected information will be aggregated to develop an initial status report on wood processing SMEs in the localities before VPA-FLEGT implementation.

Some pictures of the training was shown as below.

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