Govt wants ‘origin of products’ displayed, calls e-commerce firms for meet

This follows the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform making it mandatory for its listed sellers to specify the country of origin while registering all new products on the portal

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has called e-commerce majors, including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and Paytm, for a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the ‘displaying origin of the product’ on these platforms, as anti-China sentiment picks up in the country. This follows the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform making it mandatory for its listed sellers to specify the country of origin while registering all new products on the portal.

The border stand-off between India and China has sparked a campaign here that is gaining momentum to boycott Chinese products.The meeting is being organised on a video conferencing platform, according to people in the know. Ministry officials said that this issue has come up earlier and implementation issues for e-marketplaces would be discussed at the meeting on Wednesday. Among other invitees to the discussion are Pepperfry and The E-commerce Council of India.

E-commerce executives said asking sellers to fill up information about ‘country of origin’ for new listings of products is not complicated. However, the challenge is that the millions of existing products already listed on the e-commerce platforms don’t have those details and it would be a very “time consuming” process for the sellers to mark the country of origin for those products. However, for some products, this information is already available…Read More