Centre To Bring Ecommerce Policies: Government Official

A senior government official said that the government is working to bring a national retail trade and e-commerce policy to promote the growth of the sector in the country, according to a PTI report.

Joint Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Sanjiv told PTI that the retail trade policy would provide brick and mortar retail traders a business friendly environment, modern infrastructure facilities and easy access to credit.

"We want that there should be synergy between e-commerce as well as retail traders. The accident insurance scheme would particularly help small traders of the country," said Sanjiv in a statement.

"The government is trying to do policy changes not only in e-commerce but national retail trade policy which will be for physical traders which will be introducing ease of doing business, providing better infrastructural facilities, providing more credit and providing all sorts of benefits to traders," he further added.

The Joint Secretary reportedly urged the industry to focus on producing high quality products. Further, he said that there is no dichotomy between physical and online retail trade and both cannot survive without each other. The government, he said, is also working on issuing quality control orders for different products with an aim to cut imports of sub-standard products into the country, stated the report.

The Indian e-commerce industry has been on an upward growth trajectory. After a surge in digital adoption during Covid-19, the Indian e-commerce market is estimated to be worth over $55 billion in gross merchandise value in 2021. By 2030, it is expected to have an annual gross merchandise value of $350 billion, according to Invest India website.