Govt working to bring retail trade, e-commerce policies: Official

New Delhi: The government is working to bring a national retail trade and e-commerce policy to promote the growth of the sector in the country, a senior official said on Monday.

Joint Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Sanjiv said that the retail trade policy would provide brick and mortar retail traders a business friendly environment, modern infrastructure facilities and easy access to credit.

The policy is expedited to focus on formulating strategies to provide a globally competitive and sustainable environment for the overall development of retail trade through targeted efforts.

The Department, he said, is also working to bring an e-commerce policy for online retailers.

"We want that there should be a synergy between e-commerce as well as retail traders," Sanjiv said at a conference on FMCG and e-commerce here.

The Department is also in the process of formulating an insurance scheme for all the retail traders.

The accident insurance scheme would particularly help small traders of the country, he added.

"The government is trying to do policy changes not only in e-commerce but national retail trade policy for physical traders which will be introducing ease of doing business, providing better infrastructural facilities, providing more credit and providing all sorts of benefits to traders," he said.

The Joint Secretary urged the industry to focus on producing high quality products.

Further, he said that there is no dichotomy between physical and online retail trade and both can not survive without each other.

Talking about the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative of the government, he said that it will change the entire ecosystem of e-commerce and break hegemony of the few e-commerce giants.

The government, he said, is also working on issuing quality control orders for different products with an aim to cut imports of sub-standard products into the country.

The Indian retail market is one of the fastest growing in the world and is expected to reach USD 2 trillion by 2032, according to Reliance Retail Director Subramaniam V.