The previous part of this article was about The Next Frontier in Global Online Trade & Commerce, a Bus India should not miss …. This is the continuation which deals with “How GoI should establish a set of favorable Policy Frameworks to promote CBEC”.
Govt of India should facilitate and speed up India’s participation in Global Crossborder E-commerce as in a cross-border e-commerce environment most of the old rules that dictated retail operations, branding, merchandising, shopping & distribution for decades are largely useless. In short, it is now critical for GoI to incentivize India’s manufacturers to not “think globally and act locally” but to “think globally and act globally” to make 3-4 billion, rather than 300-400 million, people their customers.
GoI must set up pilot Digital Free Trade Zones gateways at Delhi & Mumbai to eliminate Import-Export Tariffs & Tax circumventions from limiting the scope for CBEC business growth in India.
GoI should establish a set of favorable Policy Frameworks as a Tailwind to promote CBEC and announce a comprehensive new set of regulations primarily to cover these areas:
• Standardize and regulate CBEC practices for India.
• Restrict the temptation of Indian Policymaking bureaucracy to over-regulate and thereby end up creating policy loopholes & resultant evasions and finally posing limitations for the growth of e-commerce Industry. GoI must realize Crossborder e-commerce represents new unstoppable Global Tradewinds and offers huge potential to create Manufacturing led jobs growth across India.
• Indians may not have invented e-commerce but its brilliant IT minds are designing latest State of Art Cloud-based Software programming technologies which enable Millions of Indian Small, medium and Large Manufacturers to employ cutting-edge e-commerce Supply Chain management technologies to sell both within India & far and wide global markets at most competitive prices and within defined timelines. So GoI must recognize promote the power of Technology to unleash an e-commerce revolution in India and empower India’s manufacturing classes to think Global/ improve Quality and delivery timelines for competing in the Global markets.
• GoI must utilize its new National Ecomm Policy under preparation for specifically facilitating Cross-border trade in India: India has one of the largest manufacturing systems in the world, with approx about 22 million manufacturers of all kinds & Crossborder e-commerce opens the global trade opportunity to all of them, irrespective of their size. GoI should act in the interest of the nation and enable growth ecosystem where a flourishing legion of tens of millions of thriving Online businesses are humming across the country within transparently laid down regulatory frameworks and the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises must be encouraged by GoI to seize upon this opportunity as Cross-border Ecomm Trade has become a highly important revenue stream too valuable to be ignored.
• GoI must set up pilot Digital Free Trade Zones gateways at Delhi & Mumbai to eliminate Import-Export Tariffs & Tax circumventions from limiting the scope for CBEC business growth in India.
• Increase efficiency / Speed of Air & Sea Port Customs clearance for e-commerce trade.
• Support Electronic exchange settlements and cross-border payments.
• Encourage e-commerce Logistics companies both Indian & International to extend its cross-border e-commerce, Omni-Channel and International transportation and e-fulfillment solution services to every nook and corner of India and help Logistics spearhead the development of Cross-border e-commerce business boom across the country.
The Indian growth story is indeed coming of age and fast-growing e-commerce trade around the world has precipitated an urgent need on the part of Govt of India to formulate a comprehensive new e-commerce policy
• Encourage latest hybrid CBEC Logistical models by e-commerce Logistics players offering its international technology solutions to provide tools needed to help ease the challenges of international e-commerce such as Duty Calculations, package tracking & Shipping Costs and Currency conversions to facilitate the implementation of innovative e-commerce cross-border business enablement capabilities in India. A key enabling outcome of such Logistical models is it provides India’s Online Merchants with opportunities to ship locally and grow internationally as the international Logistics companies get the Orders to the customers’ international destinations navigating common cross-border selling challenges such as regulatory compliance, secure payment processing, multi-currency pricing and fraud protections etc. This is very important as Online business and Logistics providers are collaborating on the latest Technology “ecosystems” to further propel e-commerce sales in China and South East Asia. Smart Logistics helps Retailers & Manufacturers to setup and deploy complete turnkey e-commerce solutions that replace their legacy and standalone operations, thus increasing revenues while also driving down costs.
• Encourage Ecomm Giants like Alibaba, Amazon & Flipkart to establish and promote Global Selling Programmes for Indian SME’s/ MSME’s / Farm Sectors of India to think and act globally.
• A new comprehensive long-term national policy on e-commerce must deal with all issues including competition, regulation, data privacy, Taxation and technical aspects such as localization of servers and technology transfers for both B2B & B2C Ecomm in India.
• The success of any policy can only be measured by its ability to deliver the desired outcomes. China’s policy of e-commerce resulted in the emergence of Baidu( China’s Google ), Tencent ( China’s WhatsApp ), Alibaba ( China’s Amazon & eBay ) and many such companies that continue to scale up domestically and internationally and compete on a level playing field with global giants, so its important our Policymakers take a page from China and USA and adopt an outcome-based approach to policymaking while coming out with a framework for a New National policy on e-commerce for India.
Taken together, these new policies in standardizing Cross-Border e-commerce can be effective in establishing regulatory clarity and reducing the risk of litigations arising from Policy lacunae from the existing e-commerce policy which many experts believe though it is reasonably clear in its intent but lacks overall comprehensiveness, coverage, interdepartmental coordination and enforcement muscle.
The Indian growth story is indeed coming of age and fast-growing e-commerce trade around the world has precipitated an urgent need on the part of Govt of India to formulate a comprehensive new e-commerce policy that will become the basis for our global position on e-commerce and help the Government of India signal that the country is open for business on fair and equitable terms.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
- Why India should have different players for different formats - November 26, 2021
- India’s Trade Policy Blues - April 12, 2021
- The idea of a Modern Secular Bharat– Part 2 - October 9, 2018
