Chapter 13 Informality in Bangladesh’s Agricultural Trade with SAARC: Addressing the Emerging Concerns Mustafizur Rahman and Estiaque Bari 1 Introduction South Asia has made impressive strides in meeting the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (United Nations 2015). The region has achieved notable success in terms of many of the food security indicators which has contributed to significant reduction in the poverty levels and hunger (United Nations 2015). In spite of this, South Asia is regarded as the most food-insecure region in the world where about an estimated 323 million people live on less than USD 1.90 a day (the international poverty line); 280 million people remain undernourished (Rahman et al. 2017). There is a broad consensus that common and cooperative regional efforts will be called for to support and complement national and global initiatives towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in view of Goal 1 and Goal 2 of the SDGs which aspire for a world of no poverty and zero hunger respectively. In this backdrop, there is a need for rethinking as to how to deepen cooperation among member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) if concerned SDGs are to be achieved in the context of South Asian region. It is from this perspective that a deeper understanding about the state of regional trade in agriculture, both formal and informal, is important in going forward. This paper focuses on issues pertaining particularly to informal trade in agriculture which has remained a relatively less investigated area in the literature. As is known, South Asia has continued to remain one of the least integrated regions of the world—intra-regional trade was only about 5.9% in 2016. Whilst the M. Rahman (B ) Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), House 40C, Road 32 (New 11), Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1209, Bangladesh e-mail: mustafiz@cpd.org.bd E. Bari Former Senior Research Associate, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), House 40C, Road 32 (New 11), Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1209, Bangladesh © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 S. Raihan and P. De (eds.), Trade and Regional Integration in South Asia, South Asia Economic and Policy Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3932-9_13 249