India is not prepared to take obligations on e-commerce at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as its domestic policies are still evolving, a senior official from the Commerce and Industry Ministry has said.
“Our priority right now should be national rule-making. Because e-commerce issues are over-lapping and cross-cutting, rule making becomes difficult. We have a long way to go to reach the level of infrastructure that developed markets like the EU have in place. We are not yet prepared to engage in international rule-making,” said Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Commerce & Industry on Wednesday.
Pandey was speaking at an interactive session on ‘E-Commerce, Digital Infrastructure, Trade Rules and WTO’ organised by FICCI jointly with Centre for WTO Studies.
Since July 2016, around 24 papers have been submitted to the WTO for negotiations on e-commerce and countries like Japan have put out highly ambitious papers, pushing their own agenda. India, too, needs to push its agenda which is to protect its domestic industry, Pandey said.
Speaking at the interaction, Ashoke Mukerji, former trade negotiator for India in the newly formed World Trade Organisation between 1995-98, pointed out that it was important to organise the e-commerce industry domestically first before turning global.
“We have burnt our fingers once with the ITA (IT Agreement of the WTO) and the industry is still blaming the government for being part of it. Those were different circumstances and the initiative was also backed by some industry participants, but India has to be more careful this time with e-commerce,” he said.
A group of WTO members which includes Russia, Japan, EU, Australia, Canada and Chile is trying to push for setting up a separate working group on e-commerce at the WTO Ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires in December with the objective of starting negotiations. India, however, is strictly opposed to it.
Electronic commerce was made a part of the WTO in 1998, but in a limited way. Members had agreed to give a temporary moratorium on import duties on digital transmissions. This moratorium is extended every two years. It was also decided to hold discussions on various aspects of e-commerce, but there was no understanding on negotiating rules.
“We want the old dispensation to continue till we are prepared to move further,” Pandey said.