Linkages and Impacts of Cross-Border Informal Trade in Agricultural Inputs in Eastern South Asia

SAWTEE implemented the Nepal component of the project Linkages and impacts of cross-border informal trade in agricultural inputs in eastern South Asia from September 2016 to June 2017. The project was led and coordinated by CUTS International and financially supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and Department for International Development (DFID), UK. CUTS International also implemented the project in India while the Bangladesh component was implemented by Unnayan Shamannay.  

The objectives of the project, were to understand the drivers of informal trade in agricultural inputs across specific locations of the India-Bangladesh and India-Nepal borders, quantify such informal trade and understand its impacts on livelihoods of small and marginalised farmers, with particular focus on women-led/-managed farms. The activities to achieve this objective included literature review, focused group discussions, key informant interviews, primary data collection on informal trade and those on other variables, and to estimate the quantum of informal trade in agricultural inputs in the selected locations. The primary and secondary data collected during the research were used to produce a final report, which was disseminated to a wide range of stakeholders in three meetings held in Kathmandu, New Delhi and Dhaka. SAWTEE also published a research brief, Nepal-India informal trade in agricultural inputs: evidence from a small-scale survey, under the project.