The_Open_Door_deel1

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archives of the Concessions Secretariat of the Ministry of
Finance (63)- I should like to take this opportunity to express
my thanks to the authorities within the Ministry of Finance for
giving me virtually unlimited access to the files of the
Concessions Secretariat.
The number and names of the companies listed (in Annex 19) do not
necessarily coincide with those from the Forestry Development
Authority. All names refer to companies' names found in the files
of the Concessions Secretariat. Sometimes files were found empty
- containing not even a concession agreement - sometimes
documents were obviously missing from the file. The main reason
for selecting the Concessions Secretariat's files as the main
source of information was the fact that the information with
respect to logging companies and operations was hardly available
elsewhere owing the fact that the (incomplete) archives of the
Forestry Conservation Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture had
been transferred to the Forestry Development Authority after the
creation of the latter in 1976, and the slow start of activities
of the newly created agency (see above). The situation with
respect to the archives of the F.D.A. even deteriorated as a
result of the political upheavals of 1979 and 1980. Within a
year the offices of the F. D. A. were looted twice. On April 14,
1979 (the "Easter-revolt") and April 12, 1980, the military
coup, small children and market women caused the loss of
important files when they took reports, concession agreements,
photocopies of letters etc., pertaining to logging operations in
the country, and used these on the following days as wrapping
paper in the Old Road market nearby. In this respect I had a
personal experience when my wife bought some Liberian pepper on
the Old Road Market, a few days after the military coup of
April 12, 1980 and received the merchandise wrapped in a
photocopy of a letter from Dunbar Logging Corporation.
The production (logs, sawn timber) per company is not available,
as will be clear from the foregoing, and neither are the
investments known made by each company. As the companies had been
granted income tax holidays in their concession agreements
neither the Government nor the companies had any interest In
providing or asking for information with respect to sales,
depreciation policy, net income after operations etc. As shown in
Annex 18 some companies never sent in income statements, although
they had been operating in the country for about 20 years.
Other companies irregularly sent in their statements which - in
some cases - were subsequently improperly filed, misplaced and
lost. It was also for this reason that no attempt was made to
reveal the main history of these companies - an attempt bound to
fail given the shortcomings of available data.
Annex 19 contains therefore information of a general character on