New Delhi, Sep 17 (KNN) The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has called for early introduction of E-Commerce Policy in the country as they feel that the festive season of this year is going begin from 15th October and in the absence of any policy, the e-commerce portals will play their "dirty game of predatory pricing", deep discounting and will vitiate the e-commerce market of the country.

Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu has been urged by CAIT to restrict preferred sellers of e-Commerce companies to sell products in e-Commerce portals alleging these preferred sellers are instrumental in all sorts of malpractices.

The government has already issued first draft of e-Commerce Policy and a Group of Secretaries are already in the process of examining the draft.

CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said, “There are important provisions on data localization and checking abuse of FDI should be retained in the policy to check unauthorized infiltration of goods through e-commerce.”

CAIT raised concerns regarding what is happening with current violations that are very much open and known and whether they will be employed to stop malpractice.

The provision for a separate section of ED for looking into Press Note 3 related violations is good but, making sure that FDI based ecommerce companies do not violate Press Note 3 provision is more important, said CAIT.

However, the very fact that related parties and group companies are used to violate the letter and spirit of Press Note 3 is not mentioned and must be included in the policy.

Re-examining the intermediary protection under IT Act is also a positive move.

There are various concerns for traders like enhancing limits of exports or imports through couriers beyond 25 K is a concern for traders. The biggest concern for traders would be proposal to allow up to 49 % FDI in inventory model based businesses as long as the products are 100 % Indian made, and ownership controls remain Indian, CAIT said.

Such a provision is back door entry of MNCs in retail trade of India and must be scrapped. The traders will never accept such a provision under any circumstances, CAIT said.

Both trade leaders said that there are no provisions to improve technical abilities for small traders, to help them digitalize, to set up e-com platforms in cooperative or similar public interest modes where small traders can sell goods but on their terms, and preserving their best interests, the traders body added.

CIAT mentioned that one of the major problems in the policy which must be corrected is that, “Government should not simply "accept" or "be reconciled" that with e-com coming in many/ most small traders will simply have to disappear, which appears to the approach -- because while proactive measures are taken to preserve the interests of MSMEs and for Indian digital industry, none exist for small and medium traders.

Mandatory registration ofall e-commerce companies, also amending threshold limits for competition commission's investigation can be used against foreign e-commerce companies undertaking mergers and acquisitions, it added.

“For doing this a sub group on small and medium traders should be formed and submit their report, recommendations from which should be included in the main draft before it is made public”, said CAIT.