The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal
Trade (DPIIT) asked e-commerce players including Amazon and Flipkart to display
the ‘Country of Origin’; against
products on their websites. The department has suggested a deadline for August
1 for the same, Zee Business has learnt. This means that any new product listed
on the website post August 1 will contain a Country of Origin tag next to it.
The decision comes in the wake of India-China standoff
and growing sentiment to boycott Chinese products following the Galvan Valley
clash last month.
The message was conveyed to all the e-commerce players
during a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.
The DPIIT had last week written to e-commerce companies
asking them to comply with the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules at
the earliest. In 2017, the rules were amended to require all packaged
commodities to display details such as the product s country of origin.
The e-commerce companies, however, have lakhs of products
listed on their websites and have demanded more time before they could reveal
the Country of Origin of all the products.
Earlier, the government had made it mandatory to mention
country of origin on products for GeM platform. The
decision was taken to give a major boost to Make in
India products. GeM or Government e-Marketplace is
the online trading platform for state-run agencies.
The announcement was made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Twitter. "Information about Country of
Origin by the sellers made mandatory on GeM. MakeInIndia “ “AtmaNirbharBharat,"
the tweet read.
The sellers who had already uploaded their products
before the introduction of this new feature on GeM,
are being reminded regularly to update the Country of Origin, with a warning
that their products shall be removed from GeM if they
fail to update the same. GeM has taken this
significant step to promote Make in India and Aatmanirbhar
Bharat .