DIGITALNA ARHIVA ŠUMARSKOG LISTA
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ŠUMARSKI LIST 9-10/2018 str. 50     <-- 50 -->        PDF

1. Introduction
Uvod
Romanian forests cover roughly 6.9 million hectares, predominating in the alpine landscapes (Florescu & Nicolescu 1996). They always played a key role in supporting the national economy and that is still true, the forest sector contribution to GDP being around 4% (WB, 2014). The Romanian forest functionality system divides the forests in two main groups (Parliament of Romania 2015) - protection and production forests - with the later predominantly managed under the continuous cover forestry practices as a compromise between production and protection functions.
The management of even-aged forests intended for the production of wood assortments is mostly based on regenerative felling that have predetermined rotation periods stipulated into management plans. Usually, this means repeated extractions in the form of thinning operations followed by several final fellings to extract the wood at the maturity of forest stands. In some cases, clear cuts are carried out to artificially regenerate poplar and spruce stands, by plantation. Only to a minor extent the production forests are managed under the uneven-aged systems.
Wood trading in the Romanian state-owned forests is strictly regulated, being characterized by standardized contracting procedures and rather an excessive bureaucracy (Rauch et al. 2015). The state-owned forest management company (National Forest Administration - Romsilva, NFA) is selling wood coming from state forests on public tenders or by direct negotiation with customers, according to some pre-established price list. Majority of the sold wood (80%) is object of public tenders and the wood is sold on the stump. The rest of it is harvested using NFA own harvesting facilities or by buying harvesting services from private companies that have wood harvesting permits issued by the central authority. This category is usually sold in roadside landings or, rarely, in central storages. The above described situation is due to the limited capacity of NFA to harvest the wood but also to the prescriptive legislation that is favoring the access of harvesting companies to the state wood resources (OM, 2016). Wood quantities to be harvested every year are at the level of the Annual Allowable Cut (AAC) established by the 10 years-based forest management plans. However, in many cases, due to the lack of accessibility, or for other different harvesting reasons, the annual wood quantity to be harvested is less than the AAC. Compared to other regions such as the Central European alpine forests (Spinelli et al. 2015), the standing wood is tendered, auction prices being established by the county branches of NFA using the reference prices that are established at national level based on market conditions, species, accessibility, estimated dimensional assortment and felling type (OM 2016). Decision on the amount of timber to be harvested, therefore sold, is based on forest management plans. Additionally, the county branches usually consider the average tree volume and provenience when establishing the auction price (OM 2016). The auction prices are established for every cut-block in RON/m3 (RON - Romanian currency) that is applied for all the wood volume to be sold in that cut-block. The volumes are estimated at the level of compartment parts, compartments or groups of compartments and include all the trees that are to be harvested in those stands depending on the operations that are planned. These are done according to a forest management plan. Forest management plans are, in their essence, authorized regulatory documents prepared at forest management unit level (usually between 1000 and 5000 hectares) and having a 10-year validity (Abrudan 2012). They serve as a reference for planning, guarding and providing forest-based services and products including timber and non-timber forest products. For private forest owners, the forest management planning is done mainly by private companies and for state forests, by the National Forestry Research and Development Institute.
The tendering process is rather complicated including a preselection of potential harvesting companies, a proper transparency and publicity of volume estimation, prices and locations of cut-blocks as well as harvesting conditions and prescriptions (OM, 2016). All the standing wood is entering the tendering process. For some quantities, there are no offers, these quantities being labeled as untendered. In many cases, due to the tendering process, the selling prices are significantly higher than the auction price. Nevertheless, the untendered wood quantities can be negotiated in term of prices between the NFA county branches and the harvesting companies, but the negotiated price must not be lower than the auction price (OM, 2016). In case the negotiation fails the NFA county branch can harvest these wood quantities, using both their harvesting facilities and buying harvesting services.
The above described wood trading regulatory system is introducing certain distortions in the stumpage market, additional to those that are determined by the lack of homogeneity in harvesting conditions and the limitation in resource. Therefore, establishing a very clear connection between wood quality or harvesting conditions on one side and the market conditions, on the other side, is even more difficult. Although there are numerous attempts to elaborate models describing the factors influencing wood prices (Sohngen & Sedjo 1998), many of them quite successful, describing wood markets is still an issue due to high influence of the limited homogeneity of the harvesting conditions and stands characteristics (Wear & Parks 1994). Stumpage market description, however, is quite commonly done with remarkable results, using the transactions evidence (Niquidet & Kooten 2006). For Romania, the very prescribed