NEW DELHI: After Wednesday’s meeting with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the e-commerce industry have agreed to display the ‘country of origin’ on each product sold through their platforms, but have sought a few weeks’ time to comply with the proposal.
“We have told them clearly that we are not banning sale of any product. But, consumers should have the choice to know the place of origin of the items they are buying. While all the players said they will be able to make the technology-related changes for products being listed in the future, changes for the existing product line up it may take more time,” said a commerce ministry official.
It was also made clear by the government that the responsibility for providing country of origin-related information lay with the seller and not the platform. Atleast 15 companies including Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm Mall, ShopClues and JioMart attended the virtual meeting that with the DPIIT headed by joint secretary Ravinder.
Company executives, who attended the meeting also told this publication that they have verbally agreed to check with sellers on the issue of displaying the country of origin next to their products. However, authenticity of the information remains a challenge, they said.Additionally, there isn’t much clarity on what the country of origin for products should be for the products which are manufactured in India, but their raw materials are procured from other countries.
“We are fully committed to promote India made products and the manufacturing sector in the country. We have already initiated discussions with our sellers, merchant partners on the next steps to drive this initiative further,” a Paytm Mall spokesperson said. The moves comes in the wake of the border stand-off
between India and China that has sparked a campaign to boycott Chinese products.
Domestic traders’ body the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) had raised the demand of mandatory mentioning of “country of origin’ on products sold by the private e-commerce companies with Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on June 15.
Traders’ body at the forefront of demand
Domestic traders’ associations such as CAIT as well as RSS’ Swadeshi Jagran Manch have been at the forefront of these demands, amidst rising nationalist sentiment especially on the social media platforms, and has called for boycott of China-made products and services to promote local goods