China has increased the
list of Nepali products that will get zero tariff facility in its market.
"China has
increased the list to 7,787 products from the earlier 4,721 products for easy
access to the Chinese market," said commerce secretary Lal Mani Joshi.
The northern neighbour
will sign a bilateral facility agreement for more Nepali products tomorrow at
the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies , he added.
Chinese ambassador Yang
Houlan and secretary Joshi will sign the agreement, but the modality will be
finalised in about a month.
China has offered duty
free entry facility from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) including Nepal but the
country has been failing to take advantage from the earlier list because most
of the products in the zero tariff list were not products of Nepal's export
interests.
China had offered duty
free access for 4,721 export items in 2010.
According to data, Nepal
had exported around 368 products from the zero-duty list to China in the last
fiscal year 2011-12.
Nepal's trade deficit
with China has been constantly increasing as Nepal does not have a strong
product basket, and also lacks the capacity to export due to supply side
constraints. Nepal's trade deficit with China in 2010-11 was Rs 45 billion and
increased to Rs 52 billion in fiscal year 2011-12.
Though there is an
increasing demand for agro-based products in China, land connectivity coupled
with bureaucratic hurdles, apart from power crisis and labour troubles are the
key bottlenecks in increasing exports to the Chinese market.
Data of the Trade and
Export Promotion Center (TEPC) revealed that Nepal suffered a trade deficit of around
Rs 52 billion with China in fiscal year 2011-12, when Nepal had exported goods
worth Rs 985.6 million and imported goods worth Rs 52.92 billion from China.
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