November 24: Nepal’s foreign trade, which just turned positive after a year, has returned to its previous state of deficit once again. The foreign trade started increasing after mid-September, but decreased again within one month. According to the data released by the Department of Customs on Thursday, the foreign trade of the current year up to mid-October decreased by 4.15 percent compared to last year. As of mid-October last year, the country’s foreign trade in terms of monetary value stood at Rs 587.46 billion, while in the corresponding period of the current year; Nepal’s foreign trade was just worth Rs 563.6 billion. The country’s foreign trade has been affected due to the sharp decline in imports and exports.

As of mid-October, the country’s imports stood at Rs 512.50 billion, while the export figure amounted to a meagre Rs 50.56 billion. Compared to the same period of last year, the import decreased by 3.79 percent and the export decreased by 7.68 percent. As of mid-November this year, imports worth Rs 147.4 billion and exports worth Rs 9.69 billion have been recorded.

Analysts said referring to Nepal Rastra Bank’s data that the country’s overall economy improved recently due to the improvement in external sector indicators mainly due to increase in volume of foreign trade. However, the country’s foreign trade took a nosedive within a month.

After the pressure on foreign exchange reserves eased, the government opened import restrictions and NRB also reviewed its policy. However, the data of mid-November shows that there will be no improvement in foreign trade. According to the latest report of NRB, as of mid-November, the current account of the country is in a surplus of Rs 99.7 billion. The foreign currency reserve is Rs 1643.9 billion, which can cover the import of goods and services for 10.3 months. Similarly, bank deposits and loan investments have also increased.