Understanding informal agrifood trade between India and Bangladeshs benefit from the proportion of tropical forest regardless of its edge length
An analytical framework
Informal trade
Informal cross-border trade plays a major role in the BIMSTEC region, given the shared borders between member countries such as India with Bangladesh and Nepal.
Informal trade is defined through the exchange process and consists of unrecorded trade flows that escape official statistics. “Informality” refers to the nature of the trade, not the trader's status.
The literature categorizes informal trade into three types:
1 unregistered traders or firms that operate outside the formal economy
2 registered firms that evade regulations and duties
3 registered firms that partly evade regulations and duties through illegal practices
Formally recorded agrifood trade between India and Bangladesh
- In 2021/22, India had a trade surplus of US$3.5 billion in agrifood products with Bangladesh.
- India’s agrifood exports to Bangladesh stood at US$3.9 billion in 2021/22. Cereal comprised the top agricultural export, contributing 56 percent to overall agrifood exports and 23 percent to total merchandise exports.
- Grains and cereals, like rice, wheat, and maize, along with sugar were among India’s top exports to Bangladesh.
Publisher: IFPRI
Author: Nisha Taneja
Other authors: Sanjana Joshi, Sanya Dua, Devesh Roy, Abul Kamar, Mamata Pradhan, Sunil Saroj
Organization: IFPRI
Other organizations: Indian Council for Research on International Economic RElations, ICRIER
Year: 2024
Country/ies: Bangladesh, India
Geographical coverage: Asia and the Pacific
Type: Policy brief/paper
Full text available at: https://www.ifpri.org/interactive/informal-trade-bimstec
Content language: English