The new road and energy taxes proposed in the Swedish Government's study "Skatt p? väg" (Road traffic taxes) will increase annual costs for forestry by 1.8 billion SEK. The proposal will result in considerably reduced access to domestic raw materials for the Swedish forest industry.
As much as 30 per cent of available timber will be unprofitable to cut. This will be a hard blow, in particular for forest owners in inland areas where haulage distances are long. The new taxes may reduce their net income by as much as 50 per cent.

This is the result of a study commissioned from the research institute "Skogforsk" by the Swedish National Federation of Forest Owners, the Swedish Forest Industries Federation and the Swedish Association of Road Haulage Companies.
Forestry is a very long term business where you have to wait for 30 - 100 years to have return on investments. If the proposal concerning new road taxes is pushed through, there will be immediate consequences for decision making concerning future investments both in forestry and in forest industry. Sparsely populated areas, where forestry generally is the dominant means of subsistence, will be most hardly hit. Sweden is a sparsely populated country and heavily dependant on transports.
Already at present there are large areas where the opportunities for profitable forest thinning are small or non-existent. Increased costs will result in considerable reductions of thinning, which constitutes an important way of increasing forest value. The basis of environmentally adapted Swedish forestry will be eroded.
To be brief, the proposal concerning new road taxes will have very negative consequences;
- Competitiveness and profitability of Swedish forestry will be seriously reduced,
- forestry activities in Sweden will slow down. Large "zero areas" will emerge in regions where haulage distances are long,
- reduced access to profitable timber will be an incentive for Swedish forest industry to shut down capacity and to expand in countries with lower raw material costs,
- reduced profitability will render investments in green forestry less attractive,
- employment will be strongly reduced, in particular in economically weak areas in the province of Norrland and in other sparsely populated areas,
- costs of bio-fuels will increase. Several house owners will be hard hit.
Under no circumstances can we accept that forestry, the motor of the Swedish economy, be strangled in this manner. We strongly oppose the proposal.