India DGFT Notification No. 24/2025-26 — Port Restriction on Jute Product Imports from Bangladesh

Mechanism

Notification No. 24/2025-26 exercises the same DGFT port-routing authority (Foreign Trade (Development & Regulation) Act 1992, ss. 3 and 5) used in the two preceding 2025 notifications in this series, but widens the restricted-goods list to four specific jute/textile-bast-fibre HS codes: 531090 (bleached/unbleached woven jute fabric), 560790 and 560890 (jute twine, cordage, rope, cable), and 630510 (jute sacks and bags). Bangladesh-origin consignments in these lines are barred from every India–Bangladesh land port and Land Customs Station, and may enter India only through Nhava Sheva Seaport. All other terms of Notification No. 21/2025-26 (27 June 2025) remain in force.

This is a routing restriction, not an import ban — the goods remain legally importable, but via a single, more distant seaport, which raises freight cost and transit time relative to the land-border crossings (chiefly Petrapole/Benapole) that jute exporters previously used for consignments destined for eastern and northeastern India.

Context: escalating bilateral series

This is the third DGFT port-restriction notification targeting Bangladesh in 2025, following Notification No. 07/2025-26 (17 May 2025 — see 2025-05-17-india-dgft-bangladesh-port-restrictions, which itself responded to Bangladesh's 13 April 2025 NBR land-port yarn-import ban) and Notification No. 21/2025-26 (27 June 2025). Each round narrows the set of Bangladesh-origin goods that can move over the land border, incrementally pushing more of the bilateral trade corridor onto a single seaport route.

Public reporting from West Bengal (jute-belt) mills in the following months describes the dispute as bidirectional: Bangladesh is reported to have restricted raw-jute exports to India in the autumn of 2025 in response to the finished-goods port restrictions, and Indian jute mills — which depend on Bangladeshi raw jute input — reported sharp raw-jute price increases and mill closures by end-2025. That retaliation and its mill-level impact is a distinct, separately-sourced development and is not confirmed here to primary-source standard; it is noted as an open question below rather than folded into severity.

Downstream implications

• Bangladeshi jute-goods exporters lose the land-border route for four product lines,

concentrating this trade through Nhava Sheva and raising logistics cost/dwell time.

• Extends the 2025 pattern of DGFT using port-of-entry restriction (rather than tariffs or

outright bans) as the primary bilateral trade-friction instrument against Bangladesh.

• If the reported Bangladeshi raw-jute export retaliation is confirmed via a primary source,

it would mark a case where an Indian port-restriction measure aimed at protecting a domestic industry (West Bengal jute mills) instead disrupted that industry's own raw-material supply.

Open questions

• Whether Bangladesh imposed a raw-jute export restriction to India in response, and if so,

its primary legal instrument (NBR order or similar) and effective date.

• Whether Notification No. 21/2025-26 (27 June 2025) — referenced here as the immediately

preceding notification in the series but not yet independently filed — should be filed as its own IPTM action.

• Whether the series will extend further (e.g., to Petrapole/Benapole for these HS lines) or

be rolled back as part of broader India-Bangladesh trade-corridor negotiations ahead of Bangladesh's November 2026 LDC graduation.