In July 2024, Ghana officially joined the GTI (Global Timber Index) Platform as a new pilot country, and the focal point is the Forestry Commission of Ghana. The addition brings the total number of GTI pilot countries to ten, and the number of participating enterprises exceeds 260, marking a 62.5% increase from last year. Starting this month, the GTI-Ghana monthly indexes will be released, and the two GTI specialized indexes — the GTI-Producers and the GTI-Woodbased Panel, will also include data from participating enterprises of Ghana.

The GTI Report for July 2024 shows that the overall performance of the global timber market was relatively sluggish. The GTI indexes for Thailand, the Republic of the Congo (ROC), Ghana, Indonesia, Gabon, China, Brazil, Mexico, and Malaysia were all below the critical value of 50%, registering 48.4%, 48.1%, 46.8%, 46.4%, 46.4%, 43.5%, 39.2%, 37.0%, and 25.7%, respectively. However, positive signs were evident in some activities. For example, the volume of harvesting increased in both Indonesia and Gabon when compared to the previous month, the number of existing orders for Thai timber enterprises continued to increase, the volume of production and the number of new orders in ROC remained stable, and the declining trend of export orders in Malaysia and Mexico had eased.

In the face of pressures from production and operations, timber enterprises in GTI pilot countries had put forward various suggestions for tackling challenges in their countries. For example, Malaysian enterprises expressed hope for government assistant to ease port congestion; Mexican enterprises suggested that the government impose tariffs on imported products to reduce their impact on domestic products; Ghanaian enterprises wanted the government to introduce policies to ensure the supply of raw materials; Indonesian enterprises sought incentives for SFM-certified or legal wood products, and in the face of low price of logs from natural forests and considering not all of them were absorbed by the domestic wood processing industry, the timber enterprises wanted to ramp up efforts to expand the market; Gabonese enterprises proposed that the railway operator SETRAG provide more carriages to certain forestry companies that have concessions; and Chinese enterprises were looking to increase the proportion of exports and shift from the domestic market to the Southeast Asian market.

Recently, the 27th Session of the Committee on Forestry was held at FAO headquarters, Rome, where the FAO released “The State of the World’s Forests 2024 – Forest-sector innovations towards a more sustainable future”. The report says global wood production is at record levels, at about 4 billion m³ per year. Other news said that the 26th World Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) was held from 23 to 29 June 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden, under the theme "Forests and Society Towards 2050". The statement released at the Congress urges forestry practitioners to make best use of the knowledge of the global science community, so as to strengthen forest resilience and climate adaptation, and maintain and enhance the social values of forests for sustainable societies.

GTI Report - July 2024.pdf