Landlocked and India-dependent: The structural reality driving Nepal’s strategic choices

The scale of dependence is difficult to overstate. India accounts for roughly 63 per cent of Nepal's total trade, supplies well over half of its imports by value, and absorbs the large majority of its exports. Historically, around 70 per cent of imports from India have entered through a single corridor at Birgunj–Raxaul.

Nepal is one of Asia’s most thoroughly landlocked nations, walled to the north by the Himalaya and opening only southward onto the Indian plains. Its nearest seaport, Kolkata, lies roughly 1,000 kilometres away. Almost all of Nepal’s third-country trade — everything it buys from and sells to the wider world — moves through Indian territory, principally the ports of Kolkata/Haldia in West Bengal and Visakhapatnam on the eastern coast, under a bilateral Treaty of Transit whose origins date to 1960 and whose most recent revision was signed in June 2023. Containers clear customs at Nepal’s Birgunj–Sirsiya dry port, fed by rail from the Indian junction at Raxaul.

The weight of the numbers

The scale of dependence is difficult to overstate. India accounts for roughly 63 per cent of Nepal’s total trade, supplies well over half of its imports by value, and........

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