2020 has been an important springboard for Vietnam's wood industry toward 2021 with good psychological preparation, solving the difficulties from the trade war between the US and China, adapting to the new conditions from the Covid-19 epidemic, identifying the risks from trade fraud and origin of goods, making new resistance to the wood industry. It can be said that the achievements in 2020, from maintaining high export value, stability in production and export, searching for new products to conquer major markets such as The United States, rapidly reaching international customers with its online business, meeting new consumption trends in the period of the epidemic, which are an important vaccine for the wood industry to maintain the development in 2021. 

Cuong, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, in 2021, the targets of the wood industry achieve the growth of 12% compared to 2020, the export of wood products must reach over US$10 billion, non-timber forest products for export over US$1 billion, Vietnam’s wood industry accounts for about 8% of the commercial market share of wooden furniture in the world. Besides, concentrating on developing two groups of products, wooden products has achieved over US$10 billion, up 19% compared to 2020, wood chips, pellets, boards etc have gained US$3 billion, an increase of 5% compared to 2020, non-timber forest products have reached US$1 billion, an increase of 20% compared to 2020. Agreeing with this statement, Mr Ha Cong Tuan Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development said that the world commercial market of furniture is very large, and the wood industry has many opportunities for its development in 2021, enterprises have many opportunities to expand and develop their market share, in addition to some new markets such as Canada, Russia, India and the UAE have high development potential. 

furniture with the largest export value among the wood and forest products export groups will continue to grow steadily in 2021. Along with that, the VPA/FLEGT, EVFTA and other trade agreements shall be the opportunities for the industries of processing, wood, forest products for export. More importantly, the wood processing and export industries have been the important economic sectors that have been paid special attention for recent years, only within 3 years, there have been three industrial conferences which are managed and directed by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, which are the driving forces for the wood industry to develop in 2021, in addition to the achievements in 2020. 

However, the wood industry still needs to correctly identify the challenges in 2021, in which, the Covid - 19 epidemic is unlikely to be completely controlled, making great impact on the world market, the trend of consumption is likely to change in a short time, and key wood products are also subject to many changes and unpredictability.

Besides, the wood industry has to solve internal problems well such as raw materials, quality of planted forests, high specialization, try to accelerate the investment in high technology, meet international standards and control the origin of goods, prevent third parties from taking advantage of Vietnamese trademarks to make damages to the industry, along with the problems of management policies, solving difficulties for timber enterprises in capital flows and tax policies.

Quang Huy (Go Viet no 129 December 2020)