Government enters final stages of drafting e-commerce regulations

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Dec 21, 2021

The government has almost finished revising its draft e-commerce regulations and will release its new revised version of the rules for online retailing soon. 

The government is gearing up to release a new e-commerce regulations draft after it revised its previous draft following criticism on its strict parameters for foreign-owned marketplaces, an anonymous source from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution told the Economic Times. The government had sought to ban foreign-owned business’ affiliated entities from selling on their e-commerce platforms and placing heavy restrictions on flash sales which was met with criticism from large, foreign-owned businesses.
 
While the government came under pressure from foreign-owned e-commerce giants to make the regulations looser, domestic businesses and trade bodies called for tighter regulations on foreign-owned online business operations in the country. The Confederation of All India Traders called on the government to restrict deep discounting and other practices by foreign-owned businesses such as Flipkart and Amazon, arguing that current regulations have enabled the businesses to monopolise the market and harm local traders. 

In order to revise the regulations, the Department of Consumer Affairs met with numerous trade representatives and business owners, according to the source. As online businesses await the new e-commerce regulations, CAIT continues its protests against Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart’s operations in India and urges the government to restrict their operations in its upcoming e-commerce regulations.