Government has no plans to allow multi-brand retail trade by foreign e-commerce companies and they could only be agnostic platforms.
This was distinctly stated by the Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal during his first key meeting with senior executives of leading firms.
Chaired by Goyal, the meeting focused on several critical issues including, the impact of anti-competitive practices in e-commerce, predatory pricing and other discriminatory practices and level-playing field for both domestic and foreign companies.
While FDI policies on e-commerce strictly bar online market places from offering discounts themselves, offline retailers have often accused e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart of violating this rule through predatory discounts. However, the online retailers have always claimed that they comply with the FDI rules.
The meeting comes in the wake of a draft policy on e-commerce in which the Government has proposed regulating cross-border data flows, locating computing facilities within the country to ensure job creation and setting up a dedicated data authority for issues related to sharing of community data, asserting that the data generated in the country is a national asset and citizens and the Government have a sovereign right over it.
The meeting also deliberated on other key issues such as understanding data flows from four aspects (privacy, security, safety and free choice), ownership and sharing of data, gains and costs of cross-border flow of data and means to monitor use of data.
The meeting comes ahead of the G-20 Leaders Summit in Japan later this month when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet.
