THE impoverished southern African state of 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 US Agency for International Development (USAID), blamed the problem on restrictive trade policies in the region. It recommended that Malawi and its neighbours in Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania should harmonise trade policies and internal market deregulation. Malawi, like other countries in the region, has embarked on policy reforms under structural adjustment programmes backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 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.