Nepal Customs Offices & Border Trade Points: Full Directory

Customs administration in Nepal is run by the Department of Customs (DoC, Bhansar Bibhag), a department under the Ministry of Finance with its headquarters at Tripureshwor in Kathmandu. The department traces its modern form to 1957 (2013 BS) and operates today under the Customs Act, 2064 BS (2007) and the annual Financial Act, which fixes duty rates. At each border and airport its offices collect customs (import/export) duty, value added tax (VAT), excise and other levies, and they enforce import bans, quarantine rules and anti-smuggling controls.

As of fiscal year 2081/82 (2024/25) the DoC ran roughly 28 customs offices, backed by a wider web of sub-offices, revenue check posts and inland facilities. Because Nepal is landlocked and imports vastly outweigh exports, customs points are the single most important revenue chokepoint in the country: goods worth about Rs 1,804 billion were imported and Rs 277 billion exported in FY 2081/82, and the resulting duties dominate the national budget.

The network splits into three tiers. First are the large southern land customs on the open border with India, which handle the overwhelming majority of trade. Second are the northern customs on the Himalayan border with China, which are fewer, higher and more weather- and infrastructure-dependent. Third are the air and inland customs - Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu and the dry ports - which clear high-value and container cargo away from the physical frontier.

Birgunj, in Parsa district, sits directly opposite Raxaul in the Indian state of Bihar and is the country's premier trade gateway. Its Integrated Check Post (ICP Birgunj), built with an Indian grant of about IRs 860 million, was inaugurated jointly by Prime Ministers KP Sharma Oli and Narendra Modi on 7 April 2018. The office clears containerised cargo railed in from the Indian ports of Kolkata and Visakhapatnam via the Raxaul rail junction, and it consistently ranks first in Nepal for customs revenue.

By trade share, Birgunj handles on the order of 58% of Nepal's total trade with India, making it the linchpin of the country's supply chain for fuel, vehicles, machinery, foodstuffs and industrial raw materials. In July 2025 (start of FY 2082/83) the adjacent Sirsiya Dry Port - Nepal's first inland container depot, rail-linked to Kolkata - was formally merged into Birgunj Customs, creating a single, unified office that had previously been split into two of the country's top five revenue centres.

The scale is enormous: Birgunj Customs alone was set an annual revenue target of around Rs 273 billion for FY 2081/82, and before the merger the main office collected well over Rs 100 billion a year while the dry port added roughly Rs 50 billion. Any disruption at Birgunj - a strike, a blockade or a bridge closure - is felt across the whole national economy, which is why traders and logistics firms watch this single office more closely than any other.

Below the Birgunj corridor, a chain of large customs offices spreads along the Terai. Bhairahawa (Siddharthanagar, Rupandehi), opposite Sunauli/Sonauli in Uttar Pradesh, is Nepal's second-largest customs office; in recent years it has cleared imports worth roughly Rs 296-300 billion against only Rs 7-8 billion of exports, and an India-funded ICP has been under construction there since 2023. Biratnagar (Morang), opposite Jogbani in Bihar and served by an ICP opened in January 2020, is typically the third-largest revenue office and a major entry point for petroleum products, crude soybean oil, motorcycles, betel nut and coal.

To the far east, Kakarbhitta (Jhapa) faces Panitanki in West Bengal across the Mechi river and is the country's easternmost gateway. A new Mechi bridge came into operation on 1 January 2023, and the crossing links Nepal to the Siliguri corridor, Kolkata, Sikkim, India's northeast and onward transit to Bangladesh and Bhutan; it is an important exit for Nepali tea, large cardamom, ginger and rice. In the mid-west, Nepalgunj (Banke) opposite Rupaidiha in Uttar Pradesh gained a modern ICP that came into operation in 2024, improving clearance for the Karnali and Lumbini provinces.

Smaller but locally significant India customs include Krishnanagar (Kapilvastu) opposite Barhani, Gaddachowki/Bhimdatta (Kanchanpur) opposite Banbasa in the far west, and hill crossings such as Pashupatinagar (Ilam). These handle a mix of formal trade and heavy day-to-day cross-border movement, and several sit on Nepal's designated transit-and-trade routes agreed with India.

Nepal's trade with China runs through just two functioning trans-Himalayan customs points, both in the central hills. Rasuwagadhi (Rasuwa district), on the Pasang Lhamu Highway, faces Kerung (Gyirong) in the Tibet Autonomous Region; Kerung was upgraded to a Chinese first-level (national) port in 1987 and has become the busier of the two crossings. Typical Nepali exports through Rasuwagadhi include metal statues, carpets, handicrafts and copper items, while imports are dominated by readymade garments, footwear, electronic goods, electric vehicles and hydropower equipment.

Tatopani (Sindhupalchok), on the Araniko Highway opposite Zhangmu/Khasa, is the historic Kathmandu-Lhasa route. It was devastated by the April 2015 (Baisakh 2072 BS) earthquake and stayed largely shut for years before trade resumed; it now runs mostly one-way, recording imports of around Rs 50 billion but negligible exports in recent fiscal years. Both northern points remain vulnerable to landslides, floods and Chinese quarantine and quota controls.

The fragility of the China corridor was underlined in July 2024, when a flash flood on the Lhende river swept away the Miteri (Friendship) bridge at Kerung, cutting the Rasuwagadhi crossing. A temporary Bailey bridge later restored limited movement, but it could not carry large containers, and full trader access has been repeatedly disrupted since. As a result, despite years of talk about diversifying away from India, the northern customs still handle only a small fraction of Nepal's overall trade.

Not all customs clearance happens at the physical border. Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) Customs Office in Kathmandu is Nepal's only air-cargo gateway of significance and clears high-value, time-sensitive and low-volume goods - electronics, pharmaceuticals, precious metals and jewellery, machinery spares and readymade-garment and handicraft exports. It is also the front line against gold and currency smuggling, with periodic large seizures reported at the airport. Newer international airports at Bhairahawa (Gautam Buddha) and Pokhara have their own customs functions but currently carry little cargo.

Inland, Nepal relies on dry ports (inland container depots, ICDs) that let importers complete customs formalities away from the congested frontier. The Sirsiya ICD at Birgunj, rail-connected to Kolkata, was the flagship of this system before its 2025 merger into Birgunj Customs; Biratnagar and Bhairahawa also host inland container/logistics facilities. These ICDs, managed in coordination with the Nepal Intermodal Transport Development Board, are central to reducing dwell times and demurrage on India-routed containers.

For traders, the practical point is that a consignment's 'customs office' may be an inland depot in Kathmandu Valley or Birgunj rather than the town named on the border. Choosing the right clearance point - and understanding which office is authorised to release which goods - is a routine part of freight planning in Nepal.

Customs revenue is the backbone of Nepal's public finances. In FY 2080/81 (2023/24) the country's customs offices together collected about Rs 420.16 billion, equal to roughly 39.7% of total federal revenue of around Rs 1.058 trillion - though that was only about 67% of the ambitious Rs 627.75 billion target, a shortfall officials blamed on the economic slowdown. The figure was still up about 7.5% on the Rs 390.70 billion collected in FY 2079/80 (2022/23).

The ranking of offices by revenue is remarkably concentrated. Birgunj (with its now-merged dry port) is comfortably first; Bhairahawa is second; and Biratnagar is usually third. These three southern offices plus the Sirsiya dry port have historically supplied the bulk of national customs collection, which is why the 2025 merger of Birgunj and Sirsiya into one super-office was so consequential - it consolidated the two biggest revenue centres under a single administration.

Because these numbers move every fiscal year with import volumes, exchange rates and duty policy, the DoC publishes office-by-office and commodity-by-commodity data in its annual foreign-trade statistics. Traders and analysts should treat any single-year revenue figure as a snapshot: the relative order of the top offices is stable, but the exact amounts shift with the state of the economy and with tariff changes announced in each year's budget.

Much of the recent change in Nepal's customs geography comes from the Integrated Check Post (ICP) programme, under which India funds and builds modern one-stop border facilities that bring customs, immigration, quarantine and warehousing under a single roof. Four ICPs were agreed for the Nepal side of the border - at Birgunj, Biratnagar, Bhairahawa and Nepalgunj. Birgunj (2018) and Biratnagar (2020) are operational, Nepalgunj came into operation in 2024, and Bhairahawa's ICP is under construction.

For logistics firms, ICPs matter because they replace scattered sheds and manual paperwork with parking yards, scanning, warehousing and electronic processing, cutting the dwell time of cargo trucks. Combined with the DoC's ASYCUDA-based electronic customs system and single-window initiatives, they are gradually shifting Nepal from a paper-heavy border regime toward faster, more transparent clearance - at least at the major crossings.

For travellers and cross-border shoppers, the same crossings double as immigration points on the open Nepal-India border. The rules for personal baggage are separate from commercial clearance, and enforcement tightens periodically; in 2026, for example, stricter collection of duty on personal purchases from India noticeably reduced casual cross-border shopping at points like Kakarbhitta. Anyone moving goods commercially should confirm current procedures directly with the relevant customs office before shipping.