The total imports by informal trade from India are estimated at around $500 million, about 42 per cent of Bangladeshs recorded imports from the neighbouring country. According to very approximate estimates based on recent surveys, total informal exports—bootleg plus technical—from India to Bangladesh is about 30 per cent of total imports, recorded plus smuggled.

The surveys said most of the smuggled imports came by the land border, and the total estimated value of technical smuggling was slightly higher than the value of bootleg smuggling. The World Bank in IndiaBangladesh bilateral trade and potential free trade agreement report, however, pointed out that the total volume of informal trade would be higher as the surveys were based on interviews with knowledgeable persons and the estimated values of smuggling in some key products are much lower than estimates from the Indian side.

The WB said these discrepancies suggest that the total smuggling could be as high as $900 million, equivalent to about three quarters of the total recorded trade or about 42 per cent of total Bangladesh imports, recorded plus smuggled. Much of this trade is quasi legal and is best characterised as informal rather than illegal, because there is a wide participation by local people in the border areas, and the trade generally bypasses Customs posts.

At the other extreme there is trade which goes in larger quantities mostly by truckthrough the formal legal Customs and other channels, but which involves explicitly illegal practices such as under invoicing, misclassification and bribery of Customs and other officials, and which in Bangladesh, is sometimes called technical smuggling. All the literature on the IndiaBangladesh informal trade confirms that this trade is essentially oneway, from India to Bangladesh.