MALAWI loses up to $12-million a year in uncollected taxes through informal trade with neighbouring countries, according to a report released on Thursday. The report by the University of Malawi, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), blames the problem on restrictive trade policies in the region. It recommends that Malawi and its neighbours in Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania should harmonise trade policies and internal market deregulation. The report says official trading is still constrained by institutional and administrative bottlenecks such as high taxes and bureaucratic red tape which encourage informal cross-border trade.