Informal cross-border trade balloons: Report

Presenting on ‘Insights into Informal Cross-Border Trade in Agri-Food Commodities in South Asia’, Dikshya Singh, programme coordinator at SAWTEE, a South Asian think tank based in Kathmandu, said the export duty imposed by India on rice in September 2022 followed by an export ban on non-basmati rice in July 2023, fueled the informal trade.

The research, ‘Dynamics of informal cross-border trade in agricultural products between Nepal and India,’ prepared by South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE) in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute, shows that only 40 percent of rice is imported to Nepal from India through a formal channel.

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