People Monitor
V-Legal Trading Practices Allegation Why do we do monitoring? In general, in the mid of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, the valuation of exports of products and commodities from Indonesia decreased compared to 2019. Surprisingly, this is not happened to exports of furniture and other wood products. Based on data from the Indonesian Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in the JanuaryOctober 2020 period, the export valuation of furniture and other wood products reached USD 1.9 billion, or up 13.3% from the previous year. Nevertheless, the facts on the ground shows that the increase in Indonesian wood export products has not been accompanied by legal and sustainable practices, especially at the level of export business actors. For example, there is still the practice of trading “flags” or names and company legality, to obtain V-Legal documents that occurred in several Non-Producer Exporter permit holders spread across Semarang City, Central Java. According to the initial information we received, this practice was caused by the reluctance of producer exporters to administer the Timber Legality Verification System (SVLK) because it was deemed expensive. So they buy V-Legal from non-producer exporters. From January to April, the Independent Forestry Monitoring Network (JPIK) received information on the practice of buying and selling V-Legal documents from more than 25 permit holders in Semarang City. The practice of buying and selling V-Legal is often referred to as UNDERNAME. The mode is that non-producer exporters apply for permits which then offer services to obtain V-legal documents to MSME (UMKM) actors or by collaborating with Marine Freight Forwarding (EMKL). For further investigation of this practice, the Center of Environmental Education (PPLH) of Mangkubumi with funding support from the FAO-EU FLEGT Program collaborated with Forestry Independent Monitoring Network (JPIK) then carried out monitoring activities to ensure several legal aspects in accordance with Ministerial regulation of Environmental and Forestry (LHK) No 21 of 89
