WTO to review India's e-commerce and farm policies, digital tax next month

New Delhi: India may need to field queries on its agricultural and e-commerce policies in the trade policy review at World commerce Organization slated next month.

India’s previous trade policy review took place in 2015, and officials said Goods and Services Tax, and changes in Intellectual Property Rights laws too are likely to attract attention at the review, which is a mechanism to scrutinise the commerce policies of WTO members.

''Various issues related to our agriculture policies, IPRs and e-commerce that were not there during the last review are likely to come up,” said the above quoted official, adding that new developments on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and technical barriers to trade are also expected to be increased.

The review is likely in the first week of January and comes amid India’s farm policies coming under the scanner of various countries. The US, the EU, Canada, Brazil and New Zealand have raised questions at quantitative restrictions on pulses, sugar subsidies, and export subsidies through its transport and marketing assistance project, and the potential collision of its food stocks on the global market and if it is breaching its support limit for other farm goods like it did for rice.

India became the first country to invoke the peace clause for breaching the subsidy limit for rice for marketing year 2018-19. It informed the WTO in April that the value of its rice production was $43.67 billion in 2018-19 and that it gave subsidies worth $5 billion. The limit is pegged at 10% of the value of food production (called de minimis) in the case of India and other improving countries.

Similarly, India has expanded the import restrictions on peas, lentils, beans and other pulses by another year till March 31, 2021 and many countries have sought a removal of these and said they are no longer a temporary measure.

India’s draft e-commerce policy, which was made public in 2019, focussed on data localisation, emphasising that the country and its citizens have a sovereign right to their data. While the policy is yet to be made public, the government, in a revised draft this year, proposed that all companies that store or mirror Indian users’ data overseas will be subject to periodic audit and also have to make available any data the government seeks within 72 hours or pay a penalty.

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