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UNECE/FAO Forest Products Annual Market Review, 2014-2015
DATA SOURCES
The data on which the Forest Products Annual Market Review is based are collected from official national correspondents through the FAO/UNECE/Eurostat/ITTO Joint Forest Sector Questionnaire, distributed in April 2015. Within the 56-country UNECE region, data for the 32 EU and European Free Trade Association countries are collected by Eurostat and for other UNECE countries by UNECE/FAO Geneva. All data are validated by UNECE/FAO Geneva. The statistics for this Review are from the TIMBER database system. Because the database is continually updated, any single publication provides only a snapshot of the database. Data quality differs between countries, products and years. Improving data quality is a continuing task of the secretariat. With our partner organizations and national correspondents, we strongly believe that the quality of the international statistical base for the analysis of the forest products sector is improving steadily. The goal of the partner organizations is to have a complete and current database, validated by national correspondents, available from FAO in Rome, Eurostat in Luxembourg, ITTO in Yokohama and UNECE/FAO in Geneva. We are convinced that the dataset used in the Review is the best available anywhere, as of August 2015. The data in this publication form only a small part of the total data available. Forest Products Statistics will include all available data for the years 2010-2014. The TIMBER database is available on the website of the joint UNECE Committee on Forests and the Forest Industry and FAO European Forestry Commission at www.unece.org/forests/fpm/onlinedata More complete trade flow information is available at www.unece.org/forests/fpm/onlinedata/forest-products-trade-flow. The secretariat is grateful that correspondents provided actual statistics for 2014 or, in the absence of formal statistics, their best estimates. Therefore, all statistics for 2014 are provisional and subject to later revision. The responsibility for national data lies with the national correspondents. The official data supplied by correspondents account for the great majority of records. In some cases, where data were not supplied, lacked internal consistency or were confidential, the secretariat estimated figures to keep regional and product aggregations comparable and to maintain comparability over time. Estimates are flagged in this publication, but only for products at the lowest level of aggregation. Despite the best efforts of all involved, significant problems remain. Chief among these are differing definitions, especially when definitions are not specified in the data, and unrecorded removals and production. For woodfuel removals, for example, in some countries the officially reported volumes may be as low as 20% of actual removals. The Joint Wood Energy Enquiry has gone some way towards improving the quality and coverage of data for wood energy. Conversions into the standard units used in this publication are not necessarily used consistently, either. The Joint FAO/UNECE Working Party on Forest Statistics, Economics and Management is carrying out work to increase awareness of problems in measurement and how to deal with them. Intra-EU trade, for example, is less reliable than extra-EU trade. In addition to the official statistics received through the Joint Forest Sector Questionnaire, trade association and government statistics have been used in this publication to complete the analysis for 2014 and early 2015. Supplementary information was obtained from experts, including national statistical correspondents, trade journals, the United Nations trade database (COMTRADE) and websites. These sources are given in the text.