Bangladesh - India Cross Border Trade

Bangladesh being geographically important in South Asia has significant role in perspectives of geo-politics, geo-economics and geo-strategy for overall security and development of region. Border management issues being trans-national in nature, a holistic systemic approach is needed to deal with the challenges of border management. Border management is one of key state functions because of many important cross border exchanges like: trade, investment, migration, tourism, sharing of natural resources etc. As an important part of Border Management, Cross Border Trade (CBT) is one of most important issues to understand border management between Bangladesh-India. This book argues that, an improved CBT management system will mitigate conflict and help improve land border management. Bangladesh and India can gain economically through Cross Border Trade with better Border Management as EU and other countries' experience has shown. CBT is a vast subject as it includes Formal, Informal and Quasi-formal border trade. Therefore, this research book has narrowed down its focus and mainly discussed and analyzed about 'Quasi-formal Cross Border Trade' and 'Informal Cross Border Trade. This research showed that, there is an excellent potential for developing Quasi-Formal CBT through Border Haat (trade in goods), Cross Border Tourism (trade in services) etc. which produce benefits that encourage border growth. CBT; mainly quasi-formal trade and controlled informal trade as an important part of coordinated border management approach have multifarious impacts and challenges which if identified and addressed effectively, will result in better Land Border Management between Bangladesh and India.