7 April 2015, HD FestForest news - The World Bank is to provide a $40.71 million (€37 million) loan for the development of forestry in Belarus. This funding will be used to improve the effectiveness of forest breeding, recreation and planting in the nation, as well as ensuring more logging residue is utilised, BelTA reports.

Young Chul Kim, head of the World Bank's representative office in Belarus, revealed the forestry development product would support 25,000 jobs at 88 businesses, as well as boosting the fortunes of woodworking enterprises, companies that generate energy through wood fuel and organisations that undertake advanced timber processing.

A grant of $2.74 million has also been provided by the Global Environmental Facility.

This is not the first time that the World Bank has funded forestry development in Belarus. It helped to improve the sector between 1994 and 2002, with a loan allowing for new approaches to forest management to be introduced such as forest certification and more advanced methods for fighting forest fires.

The new loan will aid the purchase of 74 harvesters and 52 forwarders, which will help to improve cutting of young forests. Six new high-performance waste wood processing machines will also be bought, thus ensuring waste wood and tree biomass from felling is put to better use.

Other improvements that are set to be undertaken include the modernisation of forest nurseries and the installation of video surveillance and communication systems for monitoring, observing and detecting fires. New firefighting equipment will also be purchased. A web interface is to be developed, allowing data to be shared, and it is hoped all of these measures can reduce forest fires by close to a third.

Belarus has borrowed some $1.43 billion since joining the World Bank in 1992.

Source: http://www.hdfestforest.com/News-archive.10028.aspx?recordid10028=801782597