“It is formulated to support the development of the sector which will benefit 65 million small traders. These efforts, along with industry support, would contribute significantly to India’s GDP,” he added.
The government has set up a National Merchant Welfare Council aimed at the welfare of merchants and their employees, simplification of laws and rules applicable to merchants, reduction of compliance burden and improvement of access to funds for traders.
Parkash said the government will extend all its support to the e-commerce and retail industry through various policies.
The draft e-commerce policy had proposed that companies that store or reflect Indian user data abroad should be subject to periodic audit and an industry regulator and an e-commerce law that limits the information that these companies may store, use, transfer, process and analyze. . It also empowers the government to review, investigate and take action against any e-commerce activity that threatens the country’s security.
The draft logistics policy aims to reduce logistics costs in the country to 10% of GDP from around 13-14% currently.
As for the new industrial policy, the government aims to create jobs for the next two decades and to attract 100 billion dollars of direct foreign investment each year. This will be the third industrial policy, after the first in 1956 and the next in 1991.
