The Economic Monitoring Network for Private Forests in Hungary

The private forestry sector in Hungary was reintroduced in the early 1990s, as a part of the initial economic reform package aimed at transforming the economy from central planning to a market economy. The fundamental changes required a complete restructuring of the forestry sector, which is still going on, with sound information becoming ever more important. The Economic Monitoring Network for Private Forests in Hungary (EMN-PF) is supporting a price and cost reference database, financial analysis of forestry processes, forestry holding analysis and estimation of the economic output of the private forestry sector. Each output is based on data collecting methods that are balanced between accuracy and ease of data collection. EMN-PF applies surveys and uses open databases as data sources. Forest owners’ and integrators’ estimates are an easy way of collecting data, but the accuracy of data is difficult to control. The analysis of forest holdings can be based on the annual financial reports of forest enterprises with pure forest activity. These reports are already existing documents, which therefore are easy to collect in large numbers, but do not provide highly detailed data. Based on the National Forest Inventory and the results of the financial analysis, the economic output of the private forestry sector can be estimated.