Timber market information on Leyte Island, the Philippines

Information is essential in making marketing decisions. This paper presents an assessment of information concerning the timber market in Leyte Island, focusing on sources, how to access supply and demand information, and usefulness and limitations of available information. The sources of timber market information include (i) Philippine Forestry Statistics, (ii) a database of registered tree plantations, (iii) a barangay-based inventory of trees on farms, and (iv) tree measurements and data collected in the timber enterprise survey conducted by the ACIAR Tree Farm Project. Based on available secondary data, there are 27,635 ha of forest in Leyte that is potentially harvestable. In addition, based on the findings of the barangay-based tree farm inventory, there are approximately 2.7 M trees on tree farms on Leyte Island. Timber demand by entrepreneurs on Leyte Island has not been calculated yet from the available survey data of the ACIAR Tree Farmer Project; however, estimates show that the annual per capita timber consumption of the Philippines for 2005 was 7.8 board feet. It was found that although some secondary data on timber market information are available from government agencies, particularly the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, consumer and producer-level data are scarce. Most of the producer and consumer-level data available to date were gathered through the ACIAR Tree Farm Project