Government asks to submit concerns over draft e-comm policy within 10 days

Piyush Goyal, minister for commerce and industry asks companies to submit concerns on draft e-commerce policy in 10 days and the ministry said that e-commerce industry representatives also showed their concerns about the draft policy which they felt was not adequately consultative. Government has involved various government officials from the ministry, RBI, Ministry of External Affairs, besides representatives of ecommerce and IT companies.

The issue was discussed during a meeting between the minister and representatives of commerce ministry, RBI, Ministry of External Affairs and e-commerce were present on June 17, where Amazon, Flipkart, Facebook, Dell, SAP, Google, PayPal, and IBM were present.

Goyal also assured all industry representatives that the govt will address each and every concern and asked them to send their concerns in writing to the DPIIT.

The 40-page draft policy released by DPIIT on February 23, mentioned six broad issues of e-commerce in the country - data, infrastructure development, e-commerce marketplaces, regulatory issues, stimulating domestic digital economy and export promotion through e-commerce.

Companies raised concerns related to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) data storage requirements and processing related guidelines. On this, Deputy Governor of RBI B P Kanungo, assured the industry to look into the issues.

Further, Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) assured e-commerce companies that the Data Protection Bill will reflect all the consultations that had taken place with the industry during the formulation of the bill.

On the other hand, the current FDI policy barred e-commerce marketplace entitled for mandating any seller to sell any product exclusively on its platform. Besides, a single vendor on a platform cannot sell more than 25% of the overall value of transactions, of a marketplace. Goyal clearly said, that the government would not allow multi-brand retail trade by foreign e-commerce companies in India, MeitY promised that issues like data localisation and cross border data flow will be taken care of in Data Protection Bill.

Apart from TECI, other trade body CAIT and sellers body AIOVA have been targeting these e-commerce marketplaces over violating FDI rule, predatory pricing, among other issues.

The statement from the commerce minister seems to be a good sign for all the aforementioned companies that can debate over the matter and submit their suggestion in the given time frame.