Chapter 1255 Forestry Resources
"The integration of local tin ore resources also includes the construction of smelters, tinplate production plants, power plants and other supporting facilities."
In order to save costs, East Africa will focus on integrating and optimizing the tin ore resources in the Kra Isthmus, and finally provide East African local industries with concentrates and semi-finished products, reducing intermediate links and transportation costs.
Fingel continued: "In terms of cultivating local cash crops, we will focus on developing the local rubber planting industry to replace part of the rubber planting area in our country."
"Other aspects will focus on the development of other tropical forestry resources, such as fruits, timber and other cash crops suitable for tropical rainforest areas."
It can be seen that East Africa's development plan for the Kra Isthmus has typical colonial characteristics, whether it is the development of mineral resources or the construction of plantation economies. Their purpose is only one, and that is to turn the local area into a raw material supplier for East Africa.
As for the colonial market, this is one of the most scarce things in East Africa. The scale of the colonial market in East Africa is not large. After all, the characteristic of many colonies in East Africa is a small population, and with a small population, the demand is naturally not high.
East Africa, the Kra Isthmus territory, still needs to clear out more than half of the people who cannot be "integrated". When East Africa completes the local "surgery", the market size will be even smaller. However, there are gains and losses, and the East African government is not lacking in the Kra Isthmus. Click on the market, and after the immigrants arrive, it will not take many years for the local area to recover.
Fingal said: "In addition, we plan to build an oil pipeline and two petroleum refineries locally. In addition to economic considerations, there are also energy and defense strategic considerations."
The Kra Isthmus can be said to be in a very delicate place. Its west side is close to the Tonkin Gulf Territory, while its east side is not far from East Kalimantan. Both of these places are important oil-producing areas in East Africa.
Therefore, the greater significance of building a local petroleum refinery is to prevent the smooth flow of oil resources between the two places after the Strait of Malacca is cut off.
It is worth mentioning here that the oil in the Persian Gulf has not yet been developed, so the oil plants built in East Africa will be concentrated in Songkhla.
In addition to making it easier for East Africa to transport oil from East Kalimantan back home, it is also convenient for ensuring the supply of oil to the Pacific Fleet in war situations.
Of course, this premise is that after the oil producing areas in East Kalimantan were occupied by other countries, East Africa lost the oil producing areas in the Pacific region and had to supply supplies to the Pacific Fleet from the Indian Ocean.
However, the possibility of this happening is very small. The layout of the oil industry in the Kra Isthmus territory actually also has East Africa’s future considerations for oil energy, especially the export of oil from the Persian Gulf region to the Far East.
The Far East region here is not limited to the Far East Empire. After all, most countries in the world lack oil resources.
East Africa, which holds many oil-producing colonies such as the Beibu Gulf Territory, is actually no longer short of oil resources, so exporting oil will inevitably become one of the important economic development methods in East Africa.
In fact, East Africa is currently the world's largest exporter of refined oil and importer of crude oil. The most typical example is that East Africa imports oil from Russia, Venezuela and other places, and then processes it into gasoline, diesel, kerosene and other refined oil, and then exports it to Rest of the world. Nowadays, the two major European camps are the big buyers of East African refined oil products.
After talking about the oil industry, Fingel continued: "We will vigorously develop the forestry resources in the Kra Isthmus Territory, thereby reducing the scale of timber production in eastern my country, and actively use the climate of the Kra Isthmus Territory to turn the area into an important forest farm. To meet the timber shortage in areas with relatively fragile climate and ecology in my country.”
In addition to tin mines, the most valuable thing in the Kra Isthmus territory at present is the rich local forest resources, and the timber gap in East Africa is still relatively large.
Although East Africa has the second largest tropical rainforest in the world - the Congo Rainforest. And the forest coverage rate in East Africa is more than 50%. Logically speaking, there is no shortage of wood in East Africa.
Therefore, in order to focus on protecting local grasslands or forest resources, it is more cost-effective to import wood from Nanyang.
Especially the Kra Isthmus territory, which is very close to the east coast of East Africa, has a climate suitable for forest production, and the area is not small. Fifty thousand square kilometers of land is indeed nothing compared to the behemoth of East Africa, but this area is huge in many countries.
Most of these 50,000 square kilometers of land are suitable for the development of forestry resources. Even if half of East Africa is built into forest farms, it is not a small amount.
The local forestry resources will be mainly supplied to Somalia and Kenya in East Africa. There is no need to say more about Somalia, although the Turkana Province next to it is a province with major forestry output.
However, land transportation from Turkana to Somalia is not convenient, and the forestry output of Turkana Province mainly comes from the mountains in the southern part of the Ethiopian Plateau, so wood processing and transportation are not convenient.
Although there are some mountains and hills in the Kra Isthmus territory, the altitude of these mountains is generally not high, and the plain area of the Kra Isthmus territory is not small.
Combined with the cost advantage of sea transportation, it can effectively provide cheap timber supply to the east coast of East Africa.
Although timber export is a very low-end industry, this does not mean that it is not important, on the contrary, it is very important.
Construction, furniture, molds, industrial production, etc. are all big consumers of wood. Before the large-scale application of coal, wood was still the most important fuel in the world. Not to mention other things, the furniture industry alone has a huge demand for wood. Amazing.
After all, tables, chairs, benches, etc. are basically indispensable basic daily necessities for every household, and these are also consumables. Although people in this era are relatively simple and know how to save, it cannot change that furniture products will inevitably deteriorate over time.
East Africa has a population of more than 100 million, and the demand for wood every year is quite staggering. Even for chopsticks, a simple product, a lot of forests are cut down every year. Although the number of bamboo products in East Africa is also increasing, the scale of bamboo cultivation in Africa is not large. So it’s too early to replace wood.
Ernst also said at this time: "Although East Africa does not lack forest resources, we should also note that the rapid development of East Africa in the past few decades has had a negative impact on some ecologically weak areas."
"Especially in the central and eastern parts of our country, the Oriente Province, Bohemia Province, Lorraine Province and other regions are at the intersection of grassland and desert."
"The destructive development of these areas in the past has caused important problems such as soil erosion and desertification."
"According to detection data, both the Kalahari Desert and the Somali Desert have experienced an expansion trend in the past decade or so, posing a threat to some livable areas in our country."
"Among them, excessive cutting of trees, grazing, etc. are the main factors. Therefore, for the ecological and environmental issues of the empire, we must also make plans in advance, such as setting ecological red lines, especially in ecologically fragile areas to minimize development as much as possible."
"And importing timber and minerals from the colonies can protect our native ecological security to a certain extent."
Of course, Ernst just mentioned that the current mainstream in East Africa is still development. As for protecting the environment, it will not be too late to change policies when the environment in East Africa really encounters major problems.
The fact is that the current contradiction between ecology and industrial development in East Africa is still within control. After all, the history of East Africa is only a few decades. Although the population of East Africa has grown to more than 100 million, which is not a small population, but when the population breaks through For a long time before 100 million, the population of East Africa remained in the tens of millions.
This population size is calculated after counting the indigenous people. After all, before East Africa colonized Africa, there were tens of millions of black people living here. Currently, the number of East African citizens has slowly accumulated to more than 100 million.
(End of chapter)