DPIIT to soon float draft national retail policy to seek stakeholders’ views

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. However,e-commerce firms have said that currently online retail occupies less than 5% of the total retail pie in India.
  6. 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.