The Russian Government, together with the State Duma, was instructed to ensure the introduction of amendments to the legislation providing for the creation of a unified federal state information system in the timber industry, to ensure the traceability of timber from its harvesting to the production of processed products, among other things, and in the event of their export from Russia – up to the moment of export; maintaining an electronic state forest register; establishing a procedure for interaction between the information system of the timber industry and other state and municipal information systems; ensuring the automatic transfer of relevant information to the Unified Automated Information System of the customs authorities.
The instructions also envisage, in particular, imposing a ban on the presence in forests of persons who are not entitled to use forests for harvesting timber, with machinery and equipment, and the establishment of liability for violating this ban; improving the procedure for the implementation of federal state forest supervision and legal regulation of relations associated with forest management.
In addition, the instructions to the Government relate, in particular, to ensuring the launch of an information system for the timber industry in a permanent mode and the operation of an upgraded unified state automated information system for timber accounting and transactions in test mode starting from January 1, 2021, and in continuous operation from July 1, 2021; introducing, starting from January 1, 2022, a ban on the export of unprocessed and roughly processed timber of coniferous and valuable hardwood species from the Russian Federation; drafting a new strategy to develop the timber industry in the Russian Federation; creating a federal executive body for state supervision of the timber industry with the authority to develop state policy, legal regulation and provision of public services in this area.