- The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade(DPIIT) will soon introduce draft national retail policy.The policy is aimed at promoting growth of 65 million small traders.
- The main elements of the policy includes (a)promoting ease of doing business (b)licensing (c)access to funds (d)direct selling and (e)hyper-market related matters.
- This policy is expected to cover different segments and could offer a level playing field to all players in the ecosystem while helping the smaller retailers modernise to meet the growing demand.
- This policy is being brought as e-commerce firms and traditional retail traders have been at loggerheads with the latter accusing online retailers of distorting the level-playing field by offering deep discounts on back of foreign funding.
- However,e-commerce firms have said that currently online retail occupies less than 5% of the total retail pie in India.
- In February,2019,the subject of domestic or internal trade was shifted to the DPIIT from the consumer affairs ministry, which was earlier the nodal agency for regulating the retail sector.
