National e-commerce policy within 12 months, says government

New Delhi: The government will come out with a national e-commerce policy within 12 months to facilitate achieving holistic growth of the sector, an official said.

This was informed by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal in his second marathon meeting with stakeholders, including e-commerce companies, on Monday.

"We will put in place an institutional framework to bring out a national policy on e-commerce within next 12 months," the official said.

The government, in February, had released the draft national e-commerce policy proposing setting up a legal and technological framework for restrictions on cross-border data flow and also laid out conditions for businesses regarding collection or processing of sensitive data locally and storing it abroad.

Several foreign e-commerce firms have raised concerns over some points in the draft pertaining to data. An inter-ministerial panel under DPIIT will be formed to address stakeholder grievances on FDI and draft e-commerce policy.

Goyal also said in the meeting that the Press Note 2, which talks about FDI in e-commerce, is clarificatory in nature and the government has not made any changes in the existing law. "Companies who participated (in the meeting) agreed with this.

They confirmed unequivocally that the Press Note 2 of 2018 on FDI in e-commerce was only clarificatory in nature and did not change the provisions in the FDI policy," the official added.

The minister also stated that India wants to engage with the world on data and e-commerce issues "but there has to be reciprocity", the official said.

Top executives from Walmart-owned Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Paytm, eBay, MakeMyTrip, Swiggy and others attended the meeting. The minister will meet again with retail and e-commerce firms to further address their issues.

The e-commerce firms shared sectoral concerns such as the ones related with goods and services tax and discounts.