In Zambia, forests contribute to government revenue through taxes, charges, fees and extraction royalties levied on forest operations. Table 11 shows revenue collection from forest operations by the Forestry Department between 1996 and 2003 by region/province. The sources of forest revenue are mainly from major commercial forest products, such as timber, poles and woodfuels. Revenue from other forest products is minimal, and may be captured through income tax from registered traders, municipal market fees, or in the case of honey, for example, through export tax (see above for description of the honey market). However, such revenues will not be attributed to the forestry sector.
Table 11: National Annual returns from sale of Forest products and services (Inflation adjusted, Zambian Kwacha 2003) 7
|
Province
|
1996
|
1997
|
1999
|
2000
|
2003
|
Central
|
Na
|
155,649,402
|
332,330,893
|
619,946,624
|
181,671,922
|
Copperbelt
|
557,432,328
|
1,071,409,818
|
734,448,003
|
981,059,942
|
178,541,505
|
Eastern
|
210,848,807
|
412,469,892
|
253,702,743
|
188,618,827
|
81,358,801
|
Luapula
|
-
|
61,494,262
|
196,257,863
|
85,470,291
|
48,589,732
|
Lusaka
|
144,587,197
|
423,016,120
|
435,161,357
|
386,660,843
|
144,809,605
|
Northern
|
505,128,284
|
82,487,724
|
522,560,297
|
93,941,596
|
56,770,501
|
N/western
|
111,548,606
|
313,804,642
|
275,374,991
|
250,202,377
|
73,700,522
|
Southern
|
503,907,948
|
415,934,053
|
391,794,053
|
353,414,824
|
165,903,549
|
Western
|
2,999,368
|
549,845,408
|
1,023,298,958
|
1,240,200,529
|
404,992,433
|
Divisions (Research, Nurseries, etc)
|
1,347,581,927
|
35,664,600
|
57,899,977
|
22,557,042
|
2,470,000
|
TOTAL
|
3,384,034,465
|
3,521,775,920
|
4222829,136
|
4,222,072,896
|
1,338,808,570
|
Source: Forest Department, (Various Years). Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources, Lusaka
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In general, low staffing levels in the relevant government departments have led to unsupervised logging and poor forest revenue collection (Ministry of Finance and Planning, 2002). In addition, the price of license fees discourages many producers to report their activities to the Forestry Department. Kokwe (2004) argues that increases in taxes on forest products, which have been introduced by the government during the past eleven years have directly contributed to the decrease in collected revenues. The introduction of Value Added Tax (17.5%) and a 2500% increase in forest tree licence fees in 1996, have forced reputable timber organisations out of business. Selling registered timber became a loss-making business as the price of raw materials did not match the market price of finished products. The increase in license fees did not, however, reduce the demand for timber and as a result the illegal trade increased. A change in the units of measure for licensing was introduced a few years later, which led to a second increase of license fees and a related rapid increase in illegal logging. An officer quoted by Kokwe (2004) stated “I don’t think Lusaka is getting the monies they envisaged. People have stopped paying, they are just cutting illegally.” A study in 2000 estimated that only 35 percent of the potential revenues of the stated traded volumes are collected. Moreover, this may even be reduced to 3.4 percent, taking into account the assumption that actual volumes produced and traded are likely to be much higher (Ng’andwe et al. 2006). It was estimated that the US$103,858 collected through production and conveyance fees and penalties in 2000 captured less than 20 percent of the total collectable revenue from charcoal and firewood (Ng’andwe et al. 2006, Bwalya 2004). Furthermore, it has been suggested that as little as 1% of the revenue due from licence fees from the harvest and processing of round wood was being paid and the indications are that the revenue collection system has weakened further since then (FSP, 2004). As a third illustration of under-accounting of forestry resources, we take honey production. Only the 400 metric tons of exported honey will be recognised in the official accounts, while the estimated 600-700 metric tons of informally traded honey used for traditional beer will not be accounted for.
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