The government is close to finalising the National E-commerce Policy and rules that could be announced in coming weeks, Secretary General of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Praveen Khandelwal said Wednesday.
Khandelwal who attended the meeting called by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry with key e-commerce players to discuss the policy said that Wednesday’s meeting was the final one in the consultation stage after which no more meetings will be held with the industry.
The meeting was chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade Rajesh Kumar Singh and Department of Consumer affairs Rohit Kumar Singh were also present.
Apart from CAIT, which represents traditional retail, top officials of Reliance Retail, Flipkart, Amazon and Tata Digital were also present at the meeting.
The issues of traditional retail regarding deep discounting, private labels, third-party involvement and predatory pricing by e-commerce companies are likely to be addressed by the policy, Khandelwal said.
Another issue that policy will address is consumer protection – specially on hidden charges and quality of service, he said.
The E-commerce Policy was first mooted in 2018 and an initial draft of it was released in 2019. Since then many rounds of consultations have happened.
Currently the e-commerce sector has been governed by the Information Technology Act, Consumer Protection Act, FDI Policy on e-commerce and Competition Act.
The e-commerce policy is being drafted to align it with the amendments proposed to be made in the Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules 2020.l, an official had said earlier.
The concerns of the domestic retailers will be adequately addressed under the regulations, he had said.