Traders laud govt's move to formulate e-commerce policy

Traders today welcomed the government's move to formulate the e-commerce policy which mandates online retail companies and social media firms to store user data in India, and hoped the policy will aim for a robust internal reform.

"Think tank should address a national framework on e-commerce for a robust internal reform," Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general, The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), was quoted as saying in a release.

He said key elements of such an approach comprise acknowledging the cross-border nature of data economies, being mindful of single point of failure network risks and the need for robust standardisation.

CAIT had been demanding a policy and a regulator for the e-commerce sector since the past two years.

Khandelwal while demanding prohibition on cash on delivery (COD) of goods through e-commerce said the draft is more about adoption of RuPay Cards as payment technology, whereas RuPay Cards have an extremely high online failure rate which leads to a bad consumer experience.

"E-commerce is largely still a cash-on-delivery play in India. The policy should push to create awareness on building confidence in digital payment platforms," he added.

Thus pushing RuPay on e-commerce platform should not be the first level, he said adding ensuring the existing system is used the most is rather more important.

The government has set up a high-level think tank under commerce minister Suresh Prabhu to prepare the national e-commerce policy.

According to the draft policy, data that would be required to be stored exclusively in India includes "community data collected by IoT (Internet of things) devices in public space; and data generated by users in India from various sources, including e-commerce platforms, social media, search engines, etc.

The policy also proposes that the government would have access to data stored in India for national security and public policy objectives.