To give shape to the fast-growing e-commerce sector and to regulate it, the government, during a meeting, decided to set up a task force. Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia mentioned that all issues related to e-commerce were discussed during the meeting, including taxation, infrastructure, investments, data protection, competition, and technology transfer. Apart from that, data flows, server localisation, intellectual property rights, FDI, and trade-related issues were also discussed.
The meeting was the first one of the think tank that's working on a framework for national policy on e-commerce. It was constituted under the chairmanship of Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu.
"The objective is to come out with a framework for an e-commerce policy," Teaotia said. "The task force will come out with a set of recommendations which would be brought before the think tank in five months. The think tank will give its report in six months," Teaotia added.
She said that a policy is important in view of the issues being faced by the domestic industry. A detailed national policy on the sector would help India in articulating its stand on e-commerce at the World Trade Organization (WTO), she added.
Prabhu said there has been an exponential growth of e-commerce sector. The domestic industry is going to grow and "we must try to promote it and for that there is a need for a policy". E-commerce firms can play a greater global role, he added.
Senior officials of various ministries and departments, representatives from industry bodies, e-commerce companies, telecommunication and IT firms, RBI and independent experts participated in the meeting.
TRAI Chairman R S Sharma, who participated in the deliberation, said: "We need to have a policy which ensures privacy and ownership, security of data." He also added that with a new taxation system and with an increase in digital transactions, there is a need to have proper data policy.
"For e-commerce, digital infrastructure to flourish in India, we need to have robust connectivity infrastructure. Fortunately, we have large telecom players and 1.2 billion connections and 400 million Internet users, huge amount of data flow taking place.
"But I think we need to have much more fibre infrastructure so we need to have wired internet more and there are certain suggestions which we have already given to the government," he added.
(With PTI inputs)