Maputo, Mozambique, 8 Jan – Mozambique is due to net a total of US$95 million from exports of wood, according to the National Forestry and Land Directorate (DNFT), an arm of the Agriculture Ministry.

“Despite the constant indiscriminate cutting down of wood, Mozambique has the capacity to continue to be considered as a potential exporter of commercially valuable wood over the next five years,” the DNFT said in a document cited by newspaper Correio da Manhã.

In that document the DNFT called on Mozambique’s international cooperation partners to contribute to combating illegal trade of forestry resources.

At the end of 2008, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced it would provide an annual sum of US$5 million for a programme to reforest the country, which is undergoing desertification due to illegal logging of several tree species.

The experimental phase of the programme began in 2007, when WWF applied US$175,000 to replanting an area of approximately 67,000 square kilometres in the Chiguenhene region of Manica province, which had been destroyed due to unauthorised logging. (macauhub)