Govt to bring amendments to Competition law for greater regulation of etailers: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

The Centre on Tuesday said that it has proposed certain amendments to the Competition law for greater regulation of e-commerce platforms and ensure that presence of etailers has no severe impact on local jobs.

Responding to a series of queries on this issue during the Question Hour, Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Rajya Sabha that the cabinet has already looked into the amendments.

"The Competition Act Regulation Amendments will now bring in greater regulation....The cabinet has looked into it. This is one of the ways we are trying to regulate (e-commerce platforms)," she said in the Upper House. The amendments to the law have been proposed as per the recommendation of the Competition Law Reviewing Committee, under the chairmanship of Corporate Affairs Ministry, she said. On job loss, the Minister said such kind of impacts have been assessed by the committee and "action is being taken through various amendments suggested to the Act so that impact is not as serious." Prior to setting up of the committee, Sitharaman said anti-trust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) had made efforts to promote self-regulation through advocacy from January this year after looking into a complaint it had received in April last year.

However, a court order from Karnataka stopped the CCI from taking further steps on self-regulation, she said. In its report on the complaint, the CCI had identified several practices which were not true to the ideals of free and fair market practices, she added.