Nepal's Foreign Trade Rises on Re-Export of Edible Oils

29-Jul-2025 01:54 PM

Kathmandu. India's northern neighbor Nepal's foreign trade crossed the limit of Rs 2 trillion in the financial year 2024-25. It includes both imports and exports. Actually, Nepal imports a large amount of crude edible oil from abroad and especially Argentina and after processing it, exports refined soybean oil, sunflower oil and palm oil to India.

During 2024-25, the export of these edible oils from Nepal registered a tremendous increase of 1537 percent (more than 15 times) as compared to the financial year 2023-24 and this has improved the balance of Nepal's foreign trade to some extent.

During the financial year 2024-25, products / goods worth Rs 277 billion were exported from Nepal, out of which Rs 121.53 billion (Nepali currency) was earned only from the export of edible oils. During the period under review, Nepal exported about 5.77 lakh tons of refined edible oil to India while 9.59 lakh tons of crude edible oil was imported from abroad.

Its value was estimated at Rs 144.79 billion. The Nepal government received customs duty (revenue) of Rs 9.29 billion from this import. Due to the huge import of crude edible oils, Argentina has now become the third largest trading partner of Nepal, whereas earlier it was America.

In fact, under the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement, Nepal has been allowed to export edible oils to India at zero duty and its exporters are taking full unfair advantage of this agreement while the Indian government and the Indian edible oil industry are suffering huge losses due to this.