PLANATATION AREAS AND PLANTING RATES

Teak plantations constitute about 8 percent of the total plantation area in countries with climates suitable for teak growing. In 1995, about 94 percent of global teak plantations were in tropical Asia, with India (44 percent) and Indonesia (31 percent) accounting for the bulk of the resource. Other countries of the region with significant planted teak resources were Thailand (7 percent), Myanmar (6 percent), Bangladesh (3.2 percent) and Sri Lanka (1.7 percent). About 4.5 percent of global teak plantations were in tropical Africa (largely in moist West Africa, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria) and the remainder were in tropical America (mostly in Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago) and the Pacific Islands.

FAO's most recent regional estimates (Table 1) suggest that the increase in the global net area of teak plantations has been negligible since 1990 (FAO, 1995), despite a reported rate of new planting of more than 100,000 ha. per year. This anomalous result reflects discrepancies in historical reported national plantation areas as well as the fact that a large, although unquantified, part of the reported new planting is actually replanting of existing plantations following harvest. The rate of new plantation establishment in many tropical countries does, however, appear to have slowed notably since 1990. Most planting reported in 1995 was in India, Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia in tropical Asia, and in Costa Rica and Panama in tropical America.

TABLE 1. Estimated net plantation area of teak by subregion, 1995 (1,000 ha)

Today, teak ranks among the top five tropical hardwood species in terms of plantation area established worldwide
Main tropical hardwood species in terms of plantation area, 1995