Sum. (En, Fr); 6 tab.

Trade and investment in forest products among Pacific-area countries have increased more slowly in the last 10 years than in the preceding decade. However, growth in production and exports from many developing countries of the area has been greater since 1969. For Pacific countries as a group, four related factors have primarrily influenced recent growth in forest-products trade and investment. First, world economic conditions in the aftermath of oil-price increases of 1973 and later years have resulted in slower growth in principal end-use markets for forest products, e.g., housing construction, industrial packaging, printing and publishing. Second, manufacturing costs have risen sharply with the direct inflationary impact of higher oil prices on wood, energy, and capital costs and their indirec impact on labour costs. Third, capital costs of minimum economic plant size, mainly in thr capital-intensive, pulp-and-peper industry, have escalated to the point where greenfield investments are rare. Finally the availabity of other sources of low-cost timber has diminished. For some developing countries of the Pacific, higher growth has resulted from increased domestic demand associated with industrialization and from expanded manufacturing capacity to process existing mature-timber reserves or fast-growing plantation forest. Further restructuring of fores-product trade and investment is implied by these developments and by regulation of raw-timber expors to recover greater revenues from forest resources and to capture industrial benefits of increased domestic processing of indigenours timber resources