CAIT Calls For Ecommerce Policy, Body To Regulate The Sector

Traders’ body the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has reportedly asked the Centre to immediately launch an ecommerce policy and form a regulatory body for the sector.

CAIT also urged the government to simplify the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and introduce a retail trade policy, as per a report by the Economic Times. 

The demands come following a report by the parliamentary standing committee on finance which asked ecommerce players to abstain from anti-steering, deep discounting, self-referencing and allied anti-competitive practices.

To avert these practices in the ecommerce sector, the report recommended an ex-ante regulation that will classify significant digital intermediaries on the basis of revenue, market cap, and user base.

Notably, a few days ago, the Parliament committee also sought to revamp the digital competition law to also include ‘anti competitive practices by Big Tech companies’. 

The panel recommended giving more power to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and called for forming specialised digital market units within the competition watchdog to closely monitor tech players and arbitrate on digital market cases.

Calling for a regulatory body, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that there should be a governing body similar to SEBI and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for regulating ecommerce sector in the country.

“The Centre should release e-commerce rules under Consumer Protection Act, issue a new press note in place of press note 2 of 2018 of FDI Retail Policy,” Khandelwal added.

Currently, the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is in the process of framing an ecommerce policy. Earlier, the Centre was reported to be planning to release an ecommerce policy after addressing data privacy problems and stabilising the open network platform ONDC.

Earlier this month, the RBI said that India’s digital economy grew 2.4X faster as compared to the country’s overall economy during 2014-2019. The digital economy, which was pegged at $107.7 Bn in 2014, grew to $222.5 Bn in 2019, the central bank said. 

Meanwhile, as per a McKinsey report, the country’s digital sector was cumulatively valued at $170 Bn in 2022. The industry is set to reach a size of $435 Bn by 2025 and of this, the online retail industry will be of $35 Bn. 

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