Addressing the key challenges, Nepal is keen on placing trade barriers on top of its meeting agenda as a solution to long-standing issues in bilateral and third country trade between the two countries.

Trade-Related Concerns

Nepali officials are more likely to raise issues pertaining to the railway service agreement, inter-bank transaction, bulk cargo, quarantine check, along with export concerns on agriculture, medicinal and garment products, among others as part of the discussion.

Nepali trade consignments of agricultural and medicinal products have been facing challenges owing to the lack of needed certification.

Nepali officials are also planning to pitch for a flexible policy for quarantine certification.

“We will be urging India to set up an integrated quarantine check system to facilitate exports of Nepali agro products to India,” says Rabi Shankar Sainju, Spokesperson, Ministry of Commerce Nepal.

According to Sainju, Nepal has been facing sever challenges with regard to quarantine certification despite the presence of its quarantine labs at major customs points across the Indo-Nepal border.

“However, lack of experts at the quarantine labs is one of the major setbacks that Nepal has been facing in trading agro products,” Sainju adds.

With regard to cargo shipment, Sainju informed that the ministry has already started working on the implementation of the electronic cargo tracking system.

“Importers have already started installing the system on a voluntary basis, and the ministry has planned to launch the system as a pilot project soon,” informed Sainju.

According to the Ministry, India has also agreed to Nepal’s request to allow the bulk cargo system at another three entry points: Jogbani-Biratnagar, Rupaidiya-Nepalgunj and Sunauli-Bhairahawa.

“The Indian side said it had started official procedures to review Nepal’s proposal,” noted the ministry.

Easing trade, Nepal is also planning to request India to ease cross-border banking services for the traders, and also introduce a compliance for the same.

While Nepali officials keen on holding the meeting as planned, the Indian officials are yet to confirm the same, says Sainju.

Last hosted in New Delhi in June 28-29, 2016, the IGC meeting under the Nepal-India trade treaty aims to resolve various trade-related concerns and enhancement of bilateral trade between the two countries.

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In a first of its kind exercise, Nepal will be coordinating with India in the latter’s efforts towards estimate the tiger count.

Officials from both the countries have formed a resolution in this regard in a recently-held meeting to simultaneously estimate the number of tigers.

“The resolution was passed and now we will work on the module which will be followed along the border,” says Nishant Verma, DIG of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), who was one of the key attendees of the meeting.

Both the sides also discussed trans-boundary cooperation to fight against wildlife crime through regular meetings on the issue, joint patrolling and exchange of information, among other measures.

Core Idea of the Planned Survey

This initiative by India and Nepal gains significance in view of the recent revelation by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Initiative, wherein, it said that ‘there were about 11 tigers that reached Nepal boosting the population of the specie which was under severe poaching threat’.

The idea behind this initiative is to synchronize the monitoring process of big cats across the Indo-Nepal border areas.

In India, monitoring of tiger reserves is done annually through the Phase IV analysis, followed by the estimation exercise across states once in every four years.

Whereas, Nepal’s monitoring activity has been based on protocols of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the apex body that checks tiger conservation in India.

Nepal has around 200 tigers compared to India, which reported 2,226 tigers in its last estimation in 2014-15.

Initiative to Help India and Nepal

“We share common boundary and this comprehensive estimation will help both countries in estimating tiger numbers especially on border areas,” says Bivash Pandav, Scientist at Wildlife Institute of India.

The joint exercise will extend from Dudhwa National Park of Uttar Pradesh till the Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary and Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary of Nepal. Valmiki Tiger Reserve of Bihar, Pilibhit Tiger Reserve of UP, Chitwan National Park and Shukhlaphanta of Nepal would be covered in the process.

Whereas in Uttarakhand, the boundary is shared across Pithoragarh and Campawat forest divisions.

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