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'Negotiations on rules in e-commerce at WTO premature; India in favor of promoting e-commerce domestically'
Nov 01, 2017
�Negotiations on rules in
e-commerce at WTO premature;
India in favor of
promoting e-commerce domestically�
NEW DELHI, 1 November 2017: India is in favor of
promoting e-commerce, rule making for domestic e-commerce, developing an
ecosystem to support exports and protecting the consumers� interest. However, starting
negotiations on WTO rules in e-commerce would be premature as the contours of
this space are still in the dark, said Mr. Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint
Secretary, Ministry of Commerce & Industry at an interactive
session on �E-Commerce, Digital Infrastructure, Trade Rules and
WTO� organised by FICCI jointly with Centre for WTO Studies.
Mr. Pandey said that several countries were enthusiastic to
negotiate multilateral rules to govern international trade through e-commerce.
Such rules stand to hurt the interests of most developing countries, including
India. India needs to think whether it was prepared to take on the obligations
that would bind its stakeholders to an international policy in a sector, which
was still evolving.
He said that since July 2016, around 24 papers have been
submitted to the WTO for international rule making on e-commerce and countries
like Japan have put out highly ambitious papers, pushing their own agenda. In
such a scenario, India needed to safeguard its domestic market, which was small
in size.
Mr. Pandey said that national rule making for e-commerce was
also a daunting task as there were many issues which were overlapping in
nature. Thus, the varied arms of the Government of India were trying to address
the issues pertaining to their domain to help in formulating an overarching
national policy for e-commerce.
Mr. Abhijit Das, Head, Centre for WTO
Studies, said that though there were many challenges in starting
international negotiations, but data flows, server and data localization,
transfer of technology and mandatory sharing of telecom infrastructure were the
keys areas which India needed to look at. He added that several
nations were in favour of continuing in line with the Work Programme on
E-Commerce approved in 1998. He added that India needed a harmonized approach
at both the WTO and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)
negotiations while balancing its interests.
Mr. Pawan Kaul, Co-Chair, FICCI
E-Commerce Committee, was also present in the session.
Later, the representatives from the government, policy makers, industry and academia engaged in a roundtable discussion and deliberated on the various approaches for India at the WTO on international rule making for e-commerce.
FICCI MEDIA DIVISION