Gabon
The law pertaining to forests is incomplete and either unenforceable or ill-enforced. Malaysian (ethnic chinese) and French logging companies dominate the sector - the former tending to work as concessionaires or as subcontractors for the ruling elite and other Gabonais - and both serve the dominant export market - China.

Roughly 60% of the area of Gabon allocated for logging is managed by concessionaires who have failed to pay tax. These concessionaires include Gabon's ruling elite - making a mockery of the law - and foreign companies.

There is a risk that those few concessionaires who have timber mills and who seek to manage their concessions in accorance with the law will include illegal timber in their mills' throughput (for example to maximise utilisation of mill capacity or to respond to local pressure). They can minimised that risk by providing credible certification of the chain of custody of their timber exports back to their forest origin - not to the mill.

Gabon's ruler has close relations with China. This coincides with an increase in the transparency of its financial dealings with France and large subsidies which France has provided to major logging companies with a view to managing forest concessions sustainably and within the spirit and letter of the law. However, the latter has prompted China to shift its procurement of Okoumé logs (much of which is illegal) towards Congo (Brazzaville) - a "descent to the bottom".

France is conspicuous as the principal EU destination. Other major destinations have traditionally included Israel (perhaps for conversion to plywood used in building works in the occupied territories), Morocco and Turkey. Prior to the late 1990s, Japan was a major importer.

The difference between Gabon's exports and their corresponding imports has tended to be large for most destination countries. This would be odd if former company SNBG, which had a monopoly over 70% of the country's timber exports, were run as a business free of vested interests. (SNBG, partly state-owned,has been seen as a generator of funds for the ruling elite since before the end of the colonial era.) The price of Okoumé altered very much less than one might intuitively expect when demand rose so fast and far in the mid-1990s. However, a price increase would have affected the profits of Okoumé processing companies in France. Further, the 50% devaluation of the CFA franc against the French franc seems to have had no effect on demand for Okoumé in France - which again implies that SNBG was undercharging.

Import statistics indicate that, since 1996, production has exceeded what the government estimates as a sustainable level of annual harvest. The average quality of Okoumé being harvested is deteriorating. Of the region's natural forests, those rich in Okoumé are probably the only one's which can be managed sustainably at anything like the current excessive rates of extraction.

In part to comply with the intent of the law relating to the minimum percentage of processing prior to export, several companies have current investments or plan to invest in veneer mills in Gabon. However, China is undermining Gabon's efforts to export"value-added" timber products (veneer and plywood).

Okoumé - used primarily in plywood and confined almost entirely to Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea and Gabon - is much the most exported species in Africa. Although it is the leading exporter of Okoumé, Gabon is also a major exporter of other commercial species - some of which are endangered. China imports the great majority of the region's Okoumé exports. One enterprise, the Rimbunan Hijau group, directly or indirectly logs most of this through operations which seem unsustainable and from concessions whose allocation might be difficult to prove legal in a (neutral) court of law. Rimbunan Hijau's affiliates in Gabon include Bordamur and, recently, Industrielle et Forestière du Komo (which rather than devise a credible plan for the sustainable management of its concession, has adopted a study on forest management carried out on a neighbouring forest as part of the World Bank's controversial South Estuary project).

Although notionally reserved for Gabonais, most of the concessions in Gabon's coastal forest region is actually logged by contractors (usually foreign). However, subcontracting, known as "fermage", is likely to be illegal.