KATHMANDU: In the first two months of the current fiscal year 2022-23, Nepal’s total foreign trade has exceeded Rs 300 billion. According to the data of the customs department, Nepal has imported goods worth Rs 273.59 billion and exported goods worth Rs 28.68 billion by September 16.
In these two months, Nepal has suffered a trade loss of Rs. 244.91 billion where a total of 302.28 billion rupees worth of foreign trade had made
Compared to the first two months of the previous financial year, the total foreign trade has decreased by 15.70 percent during the same period of the current financial year. By the end of September 16 of the last financial year 2021-2022, Nepal had done foreign trade worth Rs 358.55 billion rupees.
But in the current fiscal year, it has decreased to 302 billion. In the first two months of last fiscal year, imports decreased by 13.01 percent and exports by 34.88 percent during the same period of the current fiscal year. The trade deficit has also decreased by 9.45 percent compared to the same period of last fiscal year. The share of imports in Nepal’s total foreign trade is 90.51 percent and the share of exports is 9.49 percent.
According to the Customs Department, during this period, Nepal has done trade worth Rs 189.486 billion with India alone. It seems that while the import from India is equal to 169.65 billion rupees, the export value is only Rs 19.83 billion. In other words, in July 16 and August 16 of the current fiscal year, Nepal has suffered a trade deficit of Rs 149.81 billion with India.
During this period, Nepal imported diesel worth Rs 18.42 billion, petrol worth Rs 12.18 billion and LPG gas worth Rs 10.42 billion.
Similarly, unrefined soybean oil worth Rs 9.8 billion, iron products worth Rs 7.27 billion and unrefined palm oil worth Rs 6.61 billion have been imported. During this period, 449 thousand smartphones worth Rs 8.188 billion were imported.
During this period, Nepal has sold refined palm oil worth Rs 2.47 billion and unrefined palm oil worth Rs 1.91 billion . Similarly, soybean oil worth Rs 1.96 billion has been exported to India. According to the data of the customs department, carpets worth Rs 1.33 billion rupees, tea worth Rs 857 million and cardamom worth Rs 689 million were exported.