The meeting will be chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, an official said. Besides, representatives from associations including Nasscom are expected to attend the meeting. At present, 100% FDI is allowed only in business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce and not in retail segment, dnaindia.com reports. Global retail giants like Amazon and domestic industry want the government to relax the foreign investment norms in ecommerce space.
In April, 2015, Sitharaman in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, had said that there is no proposal under consideration to review FDI policy on the ecommerce sector. Meanwhile, pressure is also mounting on India for relaxing foreign direct investment norms in the ecommerce sector at the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations.
RCEP comprises 10 ASEAN nations and its six free trade agreement partners -- India, China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. These nations are negotiating a mega trade deal. Japan, one of the key members of the RCEP, had floated a paper proposing relaxation in the FDI norms in the e-commerce sector. Japanese companies including Uniqlo have sought relaxations in the foreign investment norms in the sector.
India is one of the fastest-growing ecommerce markets in Asia-Pacific, along with China. Rise in internet penetration, adoption of smartphones and lower data rates are completely changing the way India shops. As per estimates, the sectors market size in the country is at around USD 5 billion annually. Analysts say online shopping space is expanding at a massive rate.
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