22 April 2021 – the FLEGT VPA ad-hoc working held the fourth meeting with 42 participants from government, private and civil society sectors. The ad-hoc working group congratulated the success of the Technical Meeting between the sub-working groups and the European Forest Institute and was briefed on the discussion result.

This meeting marked the first deliberation of annex 4, Public Disclosure of Information. The annex will lay out the information that Thailand will have to distribute to the public and responsible organizations after implementing the VPA. This will improve transparency in the government sector and ensure that Thai and Foreign businesses, relevant organizations, and the VPA monitoring organizations have access to all the necessary information. During the discussion, the working group identified areas that Thailand could improve to ensure data collection, such as the inclusion of the informal timber sector in the central system. The Royal Forest Department welcomed this suggestion which will enlarge the information of operators in the system to ensure accurate public communication. The discussion was wrapped up, and the working group will send the draft to the European Union for further discussion.

At the meeting, the discussion on designing a concept for the reclaimed timber at the processing point and the export point was put forward. The effective and appropriate control of reclaimed will enhance its export capacity and strengthen the legality of the whole Thai timber supply chain.

The Asian Institute of Technology presented their work plan to develop a digital system to facilitate timber certification of the Royal Forest Department. The current project will develop a mobile application for use by the Forest Department official to issue a timber certification. In the next phase, AIT proposed a plan on the integrated central system that will consolidate supply chain and legal compliance data from government and relevant private organizations to the RFD SW, which the THA-TLAS/FLEGT certification unit will use to verify timber.