President of Russia signed Federal law on digital transformation of forestry complex
The federal law is aimed to improve the legal regulation of the forestry relations, as well as to increase the efficiency and transparency of the forestry industry in Russia. The adopted changes will make the basis of a fundamentally new approach to the forest management.
In particular, the document provides for the creation of a Federal State Information System of the Forestry complex (FSIS FC) by January 1, 2023 to ensure full traceability of wood from its harvest, storage sites to processing and export of wood products from the Russian Federation.
Transportation of wood and wood products is allowed only in case of an electronic accompanying document, which contains data of the owner, consignor, consignee, carrier of wood, its volume, species, assortment, places of departure and destination, the vehicle license plate, as well as details of transactions with wood.
The storage of wood after its removal from the cutting area will be possible only at the warehouses registered in the FSIS FC, and processing of wood will be allowed only at the wood processing infrastructure registered in the system (FSIS FC). It is mandatory to register transactions with wood & wood products in the FSIS FC.
The law also provides for a list of data that must be put into the State Forest Register of the Russian Federation (SFR): documents on forests, on their use, guard, protection, reforestation, wood and transactions with it, as well as documents on management in the field of forest relations, ensuring wood accounting and traceability, accounting of transactions with wood.
The law also obliges to create a unified electronic map, which will reflect the data of the State Forest Register (SFR). The map will be free and available for review to all interested parties.
“This is a big task. The most ambitious direction is the digital transformation of the multi-million document flow in the forest industry, its simplification and 100% coverage of all participants in forestry relations,” said Deputy Prime Minister Viktoria Abramchenko.
6.8 billion rubles are specified for digital forestry transformation within the framework of the federal project "Digital Public Administration" of the national program "Digital Economy" until 2024.
In addition, the document contains provisions for an experiment in 2021 in several Russian regions to transfer the powers of state forest supervision to the federal level, the participation of tenants of forest plots in extinguishing of forest fires and ban for sublease of forest plots.
The federal law comes into force on February 4, 2021, except for certain norms for which the law establishes different terms. So, from July 1, 2021, the rules will begin to operate related to data registration in the FSIS FC and data provision from the FSIS FC, maintenance of the State Forest Register (SFR), accounting of wood and wood products, requirements for the transportation, storage, processing of wood.
From January 1, 2023, the rules will come into force concerning transactions with wood & wood products, the federal state supervision in the fields of wood receiving, transportation, processing, storage, release of reports to the government authorities on the forest control & fire protection, reforestation & forest cultivation, application to annual forest declaration.
LAN team Moscow
Sources: Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation, TASS, RIA News.