Nepal, India to review railway agreement

Nepal and India is going to review the Railway Service Agreement in January next year. The Railway Service Agreement was done in May, 2004.
“The agreement was to be reviewed in every five years but due to some reasons the agreement failed to get revised during 2009,” joint secretary at the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies Toya Narayan Gyawali said, adding that this time both the countries was going to review the Railway Service Agreement during January third week.
Revision of the agreement will be beneficial to build railway link of Birgunj dry port with Bangladesh through Rohanpur-Singhdabad route.
The two-day long Inter Government Committee (IGC) meeting between Nepal and India discussed over waiver of four per cent additional duty on all export items, implementation of provision of treaty of trade signed in October 2009, trade related technical assistance and exports of waste and scrap under the new rules of origin.
Import of petroleum by the private sector, non tariff barriers and removal of equipment for the project work in Nepal were also the important issues discussed during the meeting.
Nepal and India had a bilateral trade was $ 3.46 billion during 2009-10. Nepal's import from India amounted to $ 2924.0 million and exports to India aggregated $ 538.1million. In the first eight months of fiscal year 2010-11, Nepal's total trade with India was about $ 2.76 billion; Nepal's exports to India were about $396.0 million; and imports from India were about $2366.5 million. Since 1996, Nepal's exports to India have grown more than eleven times and bilateral trade more than seven times; the bilateral trade that was 29.8 per cent of total external trade of Nepal in year 1995-96 has increased to 67.5 per cent.