The government will hold a meeting chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, of all the stakeholders including industry chambers CII and Ficci on foreign direct investment in e-commerce retailing. Representatives from associations including Nasscom too are likely to attend the meeting.
Presently 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) is allowed only in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and not in retail segment, the meeting will take up issues including discussions on pros and cons of permitting foreign players in the e-commerce sector, allowing multi-national firms to do e-commerce retailing.
Global retail giants as well as the domestic industry want the government to relax the foreign investment norms in the e-commerce space, as India is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in Asia-Pacific along with China. The sector's market size in the country has been estimated at around $ 5 billion annually.
The meeting has become significant in view of mounting pressure on India for relaxing foreign direct investment norms in the e-commerce sector at the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations. RCEP comprises 10 ASEAN nations and its six free trade agreement partners include -- India, China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. One of the important participants of RCEP, Japan had floated a paper proposing relaxation in the FDI norms in the e-commerce sector.