Global timber index monthly report, delivered: ten timber markets against the 50% line

A purchasing-managers index for wood. Every month since December 2022, the Global Timber Index platform - a collaboration between the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), IPIM of Macao SAR and the Global Green Supply Chains Secretariat (GGSC) - asks panels of leading timber enterprises in ten tropical producer and consumer countries whether business improved, held or worsened against the previous month, and scores the answers as diffusion indices against the 50% critical value: above it, expansion; below it, contraction.

Each edition carries, for every covered country, a composite GTI Comprehensive Index, twelve sub-indices with month-on-month changes and Expand/Contract/Stable flags, a six-month trend line and narrative industry briefs. Since early 2026 three parallel series land every month - the main GTI Report, the GTI-Producers Report sampling enterprises that harvest and supply logs, sawnwood and plywood, and the GTI-Woodbased Panel report sampling panel manufacturers - roughly thirty-six editions a year across the three, about forty-five per series since the first edition covering November 2022.

In Datadory's catalog the whole apparatus ships as one record: ITTO Global Timber Index (GTI) Monthly Reports, scored 6 out of 10 against a 7.81 average across the 1,744 datasets we catalog in 159 industries. The dock is packaging, not substance - the figures arrive inside document artifacts rather than keyed grids - and decoding them once, upstream, into one typed observation per country, month and index is precisely the work you are not doing.

Three countries above the line, seven below - one of the widest spreads the panel has printed. The July 2026 edition reads like a commodity cycle caught mid-turn:

Two readings carry the edition. Gabon up 12.3 percentage points in a single month, back into expansion, is the kind of swing only a survey sitting this close to the enterprise floor catches - quarterly statistics would still be averaging the previous quarter. Malaysia at 28.8, down 3.5 points, is the instrument doing its job: an early warning printed monthly, months before any lagging indicator would confirm it.

Treat the spread as ten independent reads on one commodity cycle, not a league table - more on that boundary below.

One row per country per edition, thirteen index levels plus the change and direction riding alongside, flat enough to enter a model without reshaping. Verified observations exactly as they deliver, from the July 2026 main report:

# GTI Report - July 2026 (GGSC-No. 07/2026)

country            : Indonesia
comprehensive_index: 52.7     # +2.0 pp MoM -> expansion
harvesting_index   : 50.0
production_index   : 59.1
new_orders_index   : 52.9
export_orders_index: 46.2
existing_orders_idx: 40.0
inventory_finished : 41.4
purchase_quantity  : 40.9
purchase_price_idx : 50.0
inventory_raw_mat  : 45.8
employees_index    : 47.1
delivery_time_idx  : 53.8
market_expectation : 60.0
six_month_trend    : 45.5, 42.9, 47.8, 49.8, 50.7, 52.7

# companion rows from the same edition
country: Gabon              comprehensive_index: 51.8   # +12.3 pp -> expansion
country: Rep. of the Congo  comprehensive_index: 49.3   # +1.8 pp  -> slight contraction
country: Thailand           comprehensive_index: 47.5   # +0.9 pp  -> moderate contraction
country: Malaysia           comprehensive_index: 28.8   # -3.5 pp  -> contraction

Read the Indonesia block as one sentence about a market turning: production at 59.1 and new orders at 52.9 both expanding while export orders sit at 46.2 - domestic demand carrying what external demand is not. The six-month trend underneath it (45.5, 42.9, 47.8, 49.8, 50.7, 52.7) is five consecutive months of repair. The Gabon row shows why direction beats level here, and Malaysia shows the panel's floor. Because every country reports on identical field semantics, the whole panel loads as one tidy grid - a model that wants a diffusion count of expanding markets computes it with a filter, and one that wants the Indonesia-style decomposition has it column by column.

Fifteen fields identify and score every observation, each an index percentage rather than a prose label - which is why an Indonesian reading and a Mexican reading join on identical keys, and why a multi-year backtest needs no re-keying between editions. Two companions ride on the row beside them: the month-on-month change and its Expand/Contract/Stable direction flag, so signal logic branches on data instead of footnotes.

Every definition was verified against the July 2026 edition during research rather than inferred from documentation. Derived reshapes - a composite-to-sub-index spread, a cross-country diffusion count, a stitched panel aligning all three series - depend on the cut you specify, so they fold under additional fields on request and get confirmed with your sample rather than guessed at here.

Four disciplines separate a defensible series from a chart.

First, this is sentiment measured at the enterprise front line, not tonnage. A reading of 52.7 says the direction and breadth of business conditions; it does not say how many cubic metres moved. Pair it with a volume record when a physical quantity is the deliverable.

Second, distance from 50 measures breadth, not magnitude. A 28.8 does not mean Malaysian activity fell further than Mexico's 38.7 fell - it means contraction was reported more broadly across the surveyed panel. Readings near the line mean a split market, not a stable one.

Third, never rank the countries against each other. The compiler's own methodology draws the line explicitly: each national index reflects the monthly prosperity trend of that country's timber market and must not be used to rank or compare timber markets among countries. Cross-country work belongs to trajectories and turning points, never absolute levels.

Fourth, composition shifts across the window. Nine countries anchored the pilot phase with roughly 160 participating enterprises; Ecuador arrived later. The three series are distinct instruments with their own respondent bases - a sub-index in the Producers report need not match its counterpart in the main report - so name the series whenever you scope an extract.

Tropical-hardwood procurement timing. Buyers pricing teak, merbau or okan read new orders against the existing-order backlog to position purchases ahead of a market the spot price has not repriced yet. A composite crossing 50 with orders leading is the earliest tell in the set; the sizing workflow sits on market sizing.

Export demand splits. Furniture, flooring and plywood exporters watch the export-orders sub-index separately from total orders - the split that says whether softness is domestic or destination-driven, and therefore whose currency and whose housing cycle you are actually trading.

Investor nowcasts. For pulp, panel and hardwood exposures, ten countries refreshed monthly beat waiting on annual statistics by years, and the threshold logic makes expansions countable - which is why quants treat it as a testable factor rather than a mood ring. The pattern is written up on quant backtesting and forest products data for investors and quants.

ESG and sourcing-pressure reads. Demand-side contraction paired with land-cover change shows where harvest pressure is building or easing on the ground; the pairing workflow lives on supply chain mapping.

Citation-grade research. Academics, journalists and policy analysts get a survey whose compiler, national focal points - the Malaysian Timber Council, the Thai Timber Association, Ghana's Forestry Commission, CONAFOR in Mexico, STCP in Brazil - and threshold arithmetic are stated in every edition, which is more provenance than most sentiment series offer. The citation pattern sits on citation-grade research.

Nothing else in the catalog surveys enterprises in Brazil, Gabon, Ghana or Indonesia monthly - the sentiment lane is unoccupied, which is the first finding. Every neighbouring record measures something adjacent: volumes, prices, trade flows. They are complements, not substitutes:

The joins are where the analysis lives. Set the GTI's order-book sub-indices against hard volumes from Statistics Canada - Lumber Production, Shipments and Stocks and you can see whether North American mill activity confirms or contradicts tropical-market sentiment in the same window. Calibrate price with Madison's Lumber Reporter - Weekly North American Lumber Prices, whose composite turned lower in mid-August 2026, and a diffusion reading becomes a margin expectation. When the question stretches past the survey's reach, the structural baselines take over: FAOSTAT Forestry - Forest Production and Trade, the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) Statistical Database and the Swedish Forest Agency - Official Forestry Statistics.

Because the read is monthly and the plumbing is permanent. The figures themselves are settled; everything around them - decoding the artifacts, keying the sub-indices, keeping the change and direction logic attached, catching each release week, restating history when an edition is revised - is where projects stall.

Files, feeds, or straight into your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly - your call.

Rows arrive identical either way: one typed observation per country, month and index, checked against the field dictionary before delivery, with revisions landing as new vintages rather than silent overwrites so a backtest never mistakes a correction for an error.

Go straight to the ITTO Global Timber Index (GTI) Monthly Reports product page for captured sample rows, the fifteen-field dictionary and the coverage statement, and take a sample cut to your markets before anything is committed.

This page is one thread of a wider map. The forest products data guide walks the twenty-record slice from statistical ledgers to satellite layers, the best forest-products datasets ranking scores the leaders side by side, and the forest-products data hub indexes every record. For the land-change side of producer-country risk, tree cover loss data by country pairs naturally with a demand-side sentiment read.

Every record here ships from Datadory as typed rows with dictionaries attached and join keys that hold - delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call.