The market of wood forest products in Serbia and analysis of its dynamic elements

Abstract

The most important product with a commodity character on the forest products market is wood, but also various wood assortments, which are the basic raw material in the wood industry. This paper analyzes the trends related to cutting, processing and sale of wood assortments (logs for cutting and logs for veneer peeling) from state forests in Serbia. In addition, these trends are analyzed separately for the commercially important species beech, oak and poplar. The methods used in the analysis are the Mann-Kendall trend test and the modified Mann-Kendall test with Hamed-Rao variance correction when the assumption of data independence is not met. The data were collected by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia for the territory of Serbia (excluding AP Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija) and cover the periods 2002-2017 and 2003- -2017. The research aims to determine the trends in the market of wood products (assortments) related to production (cutting), processing, as an intermediate phase, and sale of wood assortments as the final phase. The purpose of this research is to identify the trends in the mentioned cate- gories, which provides a good basis for their prediction in the future. The subject of research is the volume of cutting, processing, and sales of wood assortments from state forests in Serbia. According to the results, a statistically significant growth trend in total cutting, processing and sales of wood assortments in the period 2002-2017 can be confirmed. The volume of processed wood assort- ments largely coincides with the realized volumes, which indicates that they were sold in the same year. A statistically significant trend was also observed in the production and sale of sawn timber (for beech, oak and poplar combined). The average annual growth rate for cutting was 2.5%, for processing 2.7% and for the sale of wood assortments 2.9%. As beech is the most widely represented wood species, the changes in supply and demand for this type of wood are mainly determined by the general market trends on the Serbian timber market. Production in forestry differs significantly from conventional production, so that the production possibilities in forestry are limited by the capacity of the forests and their resources. The timber market is therefore influenced and driven by this fact.