Trade Facilitation Measures to Enhance Participation of Women in Cross-border Trade in BBIN

We gratefully acknowledge the generous funding provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Australian Government for this project. It was a pleasure working with the DFAT team both in terms of the administrative flexibility they afforded and the stimulating ideas that resulted from the preparative meetings. Special thanks also to The Asia Foundation (TAF) for partnering with us and The World Bank for supporting this endeavor. The interactions held with several stakeholders during field visits to Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura and North Bengal provided in-depth understanding of issues pertaining to the subject. We convey our heartfelt thanks to all of them for sparing the time to interact with us. In particular we are deeply indebted to the women entrepreneurs and traders for sharing their experiences and insights. We are also grateful to Manasi Lohumi and Poorva Mathur for providing assistance during the survey conducted by ICRIER. The preliminary findings of the study were presented during the Practitioners’ Workshop titled Trade Facilitation Measures that Support Cross-border Trade by Women in BBIN jointly organized by ICRIER, DFAT, The World Bank and The Asia Foundation at New Delhi on April 27-28, 2017. The feedback and comments received from participants during the workshop that were compiled by TAF contributed greatly in finalizing this study.