India may wait for more clarity before agreeing to WTO negotiations on e-commerce

India is in favour of promoting e-commerce, rule making for domestic e-commerce, developing an ecosystem to support exports and protecting the consumers' interest. However, starting negotiations on WTO rules in e-commerce would be premature as the contours of this space are still in the dark, said Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Commerce & Industry.

Speaking at an interactive session on 'E-Commerce, Digital Infrastructure, Trade Rules and WTO' organised by FICCI jointly with Centre for WTO Studies on 1 November, Pandey said that while several countries were enthusiastic to negotiate multilateral rules to govern international trade through e-commerce, such rules stand to hurt the interests of most developing countries, including India. "India needs to think whether it was prepared to take on the obligations that would bind its stakeholders to an international policy in a sector, which was still evolving". According to Pandey, India's priority at the moment should be to put in place domestic rules to govern e-commerce.

Abhijit Das, Head, Centre for WTO Studies, said that though there were many challenges  in starting international negotiations, but data flows, server and data localization, transfer of technology and mandatory sharing of telecom infrastructure were the keys areas which India needed to look at. He added that India needed a harmonized approach at both the WTO and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations while balancing its interests.

India may be very hesitant to be party to e-commerce related negotiations at the WTO level, but the country has been more receptive to such negotiations in at a regional level, particularly the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (Rcep) the proposed free trade agreement with the 10-ASEAN countries (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and its six Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) partners, viz. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Korea and India.