Congressman Virgilio Umanzor explained that the International Monetary Fund is conditioning agreements with the Honduran government on approval of the Forestry Law for Protected Areas. Umanzor is the chair of the Congressional Commission responsible for developing the legislation, which is to be voted on by the end of the Congressional session on January 20, 2004.

Umanzor, in a long explanation of why he believes it has taken four years to bring such an important law to the point of being approved, confided that the end is in sight now only because international financial institutions are basing other agreements on the approval of the law.

"Remember that the approval of the new Forestry Law is a condition for other commitments from the International Monetary Fund, but there also funds scheduled to be paid out at the beginning of next year that depend on the Forestry Law being accepted into the laws of the country," he said.

He promised that the law would be passed in this session of Congress.

"There has already been a clearly expressed agreement by the leaders that this legislative project will be an important priority and that it is expected that Congress is committed to discuss and approve this law in this Congressional session," he explained.

He explained that the long process of building a popular consensus about the law involved many participants, including the President, although he clarified that it was never made public the precise points the President opposed.

"The President has not given clear signals about his different points of view on the issues related to the content of the legislation," said Umanzor. However, Umanzor believes that the administration has not been in agreement with the plan to create a new administrative body to replace COHDEFOR (the current government body in charge of forestry management) because of the costs involved in such a shift.

"But in general I believe there has been more indifference than anything else, because even this point about COHDEFORE has not been made explicit-it is just something I perceive as having been an obstacle-but the President's office has never sat down with us to tell us if they disagree with one point or another or to look for an agreement to push this project forward," Umanzor said.

"What we have seen is that, for example, the government accompanied us in the preparation of the legislation now before Congress. We have the opinions of COHDEFOR, of the Secretary of Agriculture and Ranching, of PAAR (the government division in charge of rural land administration), which has been very active in this area. And although we have had favourable opinions from all of them on this legislation, when the bill was introduced in Congress we began to see a level of indifference and an attitude that seemed more in opposition to the bill and to the initiative to pass the law. That seemed wrong to us because they had been backing the legislation," he added.

"So, this idea that one of the obstacles to the government could be the relative fiscal cost of creating a new institution is only a perception because it was never discussed explicitly," insisted Umanzor.

Umanzor considers it a priority that the law be approved as soon as possible. He recognized that the existing law is capable of directing management of the forests, but he believes that the new legislation would permit an improved administration of forestry resources and would reverse a series of negative tendencies now affecting the forests.

For the sake of developing the forestry sector Umanzor urges that a new law be passed to give a clear signal to domestic and international investors that they should invest in Honduras' forests. The law would also assure legal security to citizen groups and communities living within the forests that they will be able to benefit from the forests' resources, said Umanzor.

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