Bangkok: China knowingly aids trade in illegal timber from northern Myanmar worth around 300 million dollars a year, some of which is sold in developed countries, a new report said Tuesday.

Environmental watchdog Global Witness said the unofficial trade involves about one million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of timber a year, costing Myanmar’s state coffers about 250 million dollars annually in lost taxes.

The trade also exacerbates military-ruled Myanmar’s HIV problem, with many loggers injecting drugs and using prostitutes. Most loggers and prostitutes are unaware of how to avoid the disease, the report added.

“The destructive logging and illegal timber trade take place with the full knowledge and complicity of the (Myanmar junta), the Chinese authorities and ceasefire groups,” said the 100-page report, “A Choice for China”.

China has signed international treaties and agreements pledging to fight the trade, but still has to implement its promises at the provincial level, officials from the London-based watchdog said.

“Two-thirds of the total Burmese exports of timber are illegal, the large majority of that goes to China,” Global Witness official Susanne Kempel told a press conference, using Myanmar’s former name.

“When we looked at the timber trade between the two countries, more than 95 percent of it is illegal, according to Burmese law, and according to Chinese law.”

Chinese customs statistics say more than one million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of timber passes into China annually, much of it from Myanmar’s Kachin state, against the 18,000 cubic metres (630,000 cubic feet) Myanmar’s government allows to be exported, Kempel said.

China is a major exporter of wood products to countries including Japan and the United States, with the latter importing about 3.0 billion dollars worth of wood-based products from China in 2003, most of it furniture, the report said.

Among the report’s recommendations is for the international community to pass laws forbidding timber imports bought contrary to national laws, and help communities in Myanmar through education and environment awareness programmes.

The illegal trade involves rebel groups which have signed ceasefires with the junta and who vie with each other to fell patches of forest first, Kempel said.

Myanmar forbids teak and softwood exports into China, but Global Witness researchers found plenty of such timber, she said.

“This is out in the open, it’s easy to see, and it’s taxed by the local Chinese authorities all along the border.”

Myanmar’s government told Global Witness only one checkpoint at the Myanmar-Chinese border legally permitted timber exports, but the watchdog’s staff said they spent a month in the area and counted at least 15.

These extra checkpoints were all staffed by Chinese customs officers, busy attending to numerous logging trucks. Chinese companies are building and expanding roads in northern Myanmar to increase the trade, Kempel said.

In 2004-2005, forest products became the Myanmar government’s second most important source of legal foreign exchange worth about 428 million dollars, or 15.0 percent of the government’s total, the report said.

The cross-border illegal trade grew by almost 60.0 percent between 2001 and 2004, it added.