Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has suggested that India should open up the e-commerce retail trade for foreign players completely, as reported by PTI.
Kant said that stakeholders’ have already been consulted on FDI and DIPP will soon present the proposal to the new government to make the final decision. Some of the stakeholders including Amazon, Flipkart, and Google are in favour of allowing FDI in ecommerce retail.
Under the current FDI policy in the country, e-commerce companies cannot offer their services directly to the retail consumers due to which leading e-retailers like Amazon and eBay have set up a marketplace model in India. At present, 100 percent FDI is allowed in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce but not in retail trading.
The government allowed 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retail in September 2012 with certain conditions like 30 percent mandatory sourcing requirement from small industries.
