India’s border authorities are preventing Bangladeshi goods from crossing their borders althouhg Indian goods are entering Bangladesh.

In this situation, Bangladesh has already given a letter to India to normalize the trade situation as a friendly country.

Both Bangladesh and India closed the border by the end of March, banning flights and restricting inland traffic. Although both countries have decided to exclude the transportation of goods, it has not been implemented in the desired sense. On this occasion, India also started exporting goods to Bangladesh.

According to the relevant sources, the economy of both Bangladesh and India was affected due to the closure of trade in the Corona situation. The first initiative to normalize the trade situation was taken by India to overcome this loss.

At the initiative of the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, a meeting was also arranged with the concerned agencies including the Ministry of Commerce, Foreign Affairs and Railways of Bangladesh and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) through video conferencing. The purpose of the meeting was to expand and develop bilateral trade and commerce between Bangladesh and India. Apart from this, India also spoke in several phone calls and virtual meetings emphasizing on normalization of trade. Realizing the importance of the issue, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also organized a meeting on bilateral trade. Through these meetings and discussions, the two countries decided to normalize the trade situation.

In view of this decision, India started exporting goods to Bangladesh on 6 June. However, the concerned authorities of India are still preventing the entry of Bangladeshi products.

Diplomats said India had already been contacted more than once about the issue. They have also been given letters to normalize trade. But nothing is working. All that is left now is to threaten not to allow their products to enter Bangladesh. And if it doesn’t work, their product entry is also stopped. Then if the country takes cognizance of the matter.

Incidentally, Bangladesh is India’s largest trading partner among South Asian countries. In the 2018-19 financial year, the total trade volume between the two countries was more than 10.25 billion dollars.