KATHMANDU: In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, the country’s foreign trade transactions stood at Rs 1,291.63 billion, while the deficit surpassed Rs 955 billion.

According to the Department of Customs, during the review period, imports amounted to Rs 1,123.48 billion, while exports were valued at Rs 168 billion.

The data indicates the country’s ballooning trade deficit. In the past seven months, trade with India amounted to Rs 629 billion in imports and Rs 137 billion in exports.

The trade deficit with the southern neighbour alone amounts to Rs 491 billion, followed by over Rs 234 billion. The details unveiled by the Department show that the trade deficit with Argentina stands at Rs 66.11 billion, followed by Rs 39.77 billion with the United Arab Emirates and Rs 12.64 billion with Indonesia.

Similarly, the country has trade profits with some countries. The trade profit with Romania during the review period reached at Rs 55.2 million while Nepal made trade profit totaling over Rs 33.3 million from Norway and over Rs 25.7 million from Iceland.

Towards the imports, a significant portion of Nepal’s import during this period is attributed to petroleum products. In the last seven months of the fiscal year, Nepal imported diesel worth over Rs 69.91 billion petrol valued at over Rs 38.13 billion and LPG cooking gas totaling over Rs 31.85 billion.

Likewise, import of essential commodities has risen with iron and iron related products amounting to over Rs 31.9 billion , smart phones valued at over Rs 21.32 billion , crude soybean oil at over Rs. 59.13 billion and gold worth Rs. 21.20 billion. Similarly, on the export front, the report stated that soybean oil has led the way, with exports reaching an impressive Rs 66.78 billion.

Other notable exports include black cardamom amounting to over Rs 8.6 billion , sun flower oil worth over Rs 5.7 billion and carpet worth over Rs 5.7 billion.