Hundreds of trucks carrying around 400,000 tons of wheat from India have been stalled at different land ports in West Bengal for at least three weeks due to reported refusals by customs officials.
According to the exporters, the customs authorities are refusing entry of the wheat-laden trucks due to India’s current ban on wheat export and they will only allow entry upon the directives from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), India's official governing body for imports and exports, reports The Telegraph.
The exporters fear that a delay in transportation may result in losses of millions of rupees as the grain begins to rot due to rains.
Last month, India banned the export of wheat with immediate effect in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which affected the global wheat supply.
However, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) stated that export shipments for which irrevocable letters of credit (LoC) were issued before May 13 would be allowed.
“At Mahadipur land port, around 100,000 metric tons of wheat are stuck. These are consignments, for which we had received payments from Bangladesh before May 13. There is no reason why trucks carrying these consignments shouldn’t be allowed to enter Bangladesh,” Uzzal Saha, the general secretary of the West Bengal Exporters’ Coordination Committee (WBECC) told The Telegraph.
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The DGFT had clearly said that there were no restrictions on wheat consignments cleared for export before May 13th, according to an exporter who did not want to be identified.
“But the customs authorities at the land ports on the Bangladesh border are insisting on an order from the DGFT that the wheat consignments, for which all formalities had been completed before the ban, could be exported,” said the exporter.
However, a customs official told The Telegraph: “We need a directive from the DGFT. Otherwise, we cannot allow trucks to enter Bangladesh.
On May 28, the West Bengal Exporters' Coordination Committee wrote to Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, pleading with him to request that the DGFT issue an order allowing wheat-laden trucks to enter Bangladesh.
The situation is the same at Changrabandha, another land port in Cooch Behar district bordering Lalmonirhat in Bangladesh.
Bimal Kumar Ghosh, president of the Changrabandha Exporters’ Association, told the Indian daily around 1,500 trucks laden with wheat had been stuck on the border since May 12.
“Our payments were cleared through SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, an international bank payment system) and letters of credit also issued by Bangladeshi banks. The central government should consider the situation. We have no problem if documents of every truck are checked to confirm that the export formalities were finalized before the restriction,” said Ghosh.
Ghosh expressed concerns as it had already started raining in the region and if wheat bags continued to remain on the trucks, the grain would rot. “Because of frequent heavy showers, water is seeping into the bags damaging the wheat. If the monsoon sets in, a major portion of the consignment will be wasted, which means huge losses for us.”
According to an exporter in West Bengal’s Malda district, around 400,000 tons of wheat have been stranded on the border in West Bengal since May 13.
“Bangladesh is one of our major buyers as importers save around 30% by buying Indian wheat instead of procuring it from other countries. In the last fiscal, around four million tons of grain were exported to Bangladesh,” he said.