Ahead of the Chinese New Year starting Sunday and will going on through February 5, Nepal's trade with China by land has once again been disrupted after Beijing shut the Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border until February 3.
This has caused a major jam in one of the key trade routes between Nepal and China, affecting the trading business of many.
Confirming the news, Narayan Prasad Bhandari, the chief of the Customs Office in Nepal's Rasuwa district, told local media that during the three-week trading window, Nepal sent 39 containers of exportable goods to China worth INR 60 million ($740,957) and received imported goods on an average of 14 containers daily.
Through the dry port, Nepal imports ready-made clothes, footwear, apples, motor batteries, and plastic products, among other things, while the country exports several local goods to China, including pashmina wool products, carpets, bamboo stools, wheat, vegetable ghee, noodles, pasta, biscuits, juice, jam, beaten rice, sugar, Nepali hog plum candy, chocolates, and chewing gum.
A Nepalese man holds Chinese and Nepalese flags as he waits to welcome Chinese president Xi Jinping in Kathmandu, Nepal, Saturday, Oct 12, 2019.
© AP Photo / Niranjan Shrestha
Bhandari shared that China has time and again obstructed bilateral trade via the land route.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border had been closed for the past 34 months and several containers carrying goods imported by Nepalese traders remained stranded at various places on the Chinese side of the border.
Back in 2015, when several earthquakes jolted Nepal, the trade volume through the Tatopani-Khasa border, which used to amount to more than INR 150 billion annually, also came to a standstill.
China-Nepal Trade Routes & Business
Although China officially announced the opening of six border points for bilateral trade with Nepal by land, so far only two trade routes, namely Rasuwagadhi to Kerung and Tatopani to Khasa, have been made available.
The other four border points include the Yari (Humla)-Purang, Olangchunggola-Riwu, Kimathanka- Riwu, and Nechung (Mustang)-Lizi checkpoints.
Dayananda K.C., chief officer of the Customs Office in Nepal's Tatopani district, shared that in the first five months of the current fiscal year, Nepal imported Chinese goods worth INR 4.42 billion via the Tatopani border, and the government collected customs revenue of around INR 240 million a month.