August 16: The 29^th Nepal-China Deputy Director General level meeting held at Lhasa on bilateral trade has decided to restrict the Chinese goods without English written labels to Nepal.  After the decision, the merchandise lacking English written labels including foodstuffs and drinks will not get entry to the Nepali market.

“Most of the goods imported from China lacks clear labelling including production date, expiry date and composition,” said Surya Sedhai, Spokesperson of Customs Department, adding “China has decided to implement the proposal of Nepal to impede goods that lacks English written labels.” Following the decision, control on import of duplicate and inferior goods to the Nepali market is expected.

The meeting also decided to form a mechanism in order to control smuggling between the two countries. Similarly, exchange of documents relating to customs (price list and others) will be done so that under- billing of goods export and imported from Nepal could be controlled. Likewise, both countries have agreed to exchange information regarding gold and drug smugglers.

The six days meeting saw discussions on various topics and said to be different from earlier meetings. The meeting has decided to make secretariat level agreement in a bid to control currently practiced under-billing. Under the diplomatic initiation of both countries, tasks including exchange of price list will be conducted in the future.

The meeting has also consented to exchange information to minimise the problem of price differentiation. Both countries have been experiencing huge price differentiation problem due to the practice of announcing different prices at Nepal and China customs points.

As the Chinese goods are labelled in Chinese language, Nepali Importers manipulate the price at the customs points. Nepal losses huge revenues annually due to the under-billing practices. Customs Department opined that the nation may control the under-billing practices given that China labelled its products in English. In order to minimise the problem, the government is also giving Nepali language training to the Chinese officials of major customs offices at border checkpoints.

Moreover, China has also approved to help Nepal on utilising previously provided custom free facility to 8,083 Nepali goods which Nepalis have not been able to use due to harmonised system (HS) code. Presently, Nepal uses 6 digit HS code whereas China uses 8 digit HS code. The different HS code has caused difficulty for Nepali production to use the facility. China has committed to provide the facility to Nepal by matching the HS code.