Top Three Proposals Of Parliamentary Standing Committee

Arbitrage, overlaps and gaps–India’s fragmented and ineffective regulation of e-commerce has led to those outcomes, in keeping with the 30-member parliamentary standing committee, which advised a number of regulatory fixes for the business.

For a begin, the federal government must collate information on e-commerce exercise in India, it mentioned.

It has additional proposed that registration of e-commerce firms with the Division for Promotion of Business and Inner Commerce must be made necessary for streamlining the regulation of e-commerce. It can additionally help in gauging the progress of the sector.

To that finish, the committee has made the next necessary suggestions:

From a contest regulation perspective, market share is an effective indicator of dominance in a sector, and one which the regulator has again and again relied upon.

This matrix may not work for the e-commerce sector the place entry to information and network-effects are necessary issues whereas figuring out dominance, mentioned the committee.

A number of options have additionally been made for offers since asset and turnover-based thresholds won’t work for e-commerce mergers and acquisitions, mentioned the committee.

The in 2019 made an analogous suggestion on account of a number of offers, corresponding to Fb-WhatsApp, Flipkart-Myntra, Ola-TaxiforSure, Snapdeal-Freecharge, which didn’t meet the turnover or asset thresholds and so, didn’t require any CCI approval.

At present, if the worth of the belongings of the goal is lower than Rs 350 crore or its turnover is lower than Rs 1,000 crore, no CCI approval is required.

Further standards to widen the ambit of merger scrutiny, as contemplated within the Competitors Regulation Modification Invoice, is the necessity of the hour. It could assist prohibit e-marketplace giants from participating in anti-competitive transactions that will irremediably tip the Indian e-commerce market.

The prevailing regulatory regime in opposition to e-commerce platforms additionally lacks enforcement, the committee famous. Presence of an overarching regulatory physique that glues collectively completely different ministries and authorities that at present regulate e-commerce will strengthen the regulatory regime.

The ultimate suggestion is to determine entities that act as gatekeeper platforms and set a threshold for qualifying as gatekeeper. An obligation have to be positioned on platforms to suo moto notify the regulator as soon as it reaches the prescribed gatekeeper threshold.

Guaranteeing the safety of monetary transactions by way of Unified Funds Interface is significant given {that a} majority of e-commerce cost is undertaken by way of this platform, the committee mentioned.

It highlighted that cost service suppliers corresponding to GooglePay, Paytm, PhonePe, and so forth., generate income from transactions by way of their platform and command a significant share in e-commerce transactions. However, they don’t seem to be answerable for instances of frauds that happen by way of their UPI.

So, it has advised that safety measures or Normal Working Procedures which can be relevant to banks must be made necessary to UPI-based PSPs to keep away from monetary frauds on their cost platforms.

India suffers a lack of over Rs 1 lakh crore a yr owing to the sale and buy of counterfeit items, the committee mentioned. Whereas India has a well-defined authorized and regulatory framework for cover of mental property rights, legal guidelines for the digital world should be up to date.

Due diligence measures have to be imposed on the sellers and platforms to make sure that merchandise by way of them are genuine and don’t infringe upon Mental Property Rights.

Sellers of counterfeit merchandise must be made to pay the loss suffered by real rights holder and have to be barred from the e-commerce house.

And eventually, platforms must be made answerable for delivery-related, counterfeit merchandise/companies points, the parliamentary committee mentioned.