Anti-competitive practices in digital markets: CAIT seeks regulatory body for e-commerce

Traders’ body CAIT on Friday demanded that the government should immediately roll out a robust e-commerce policy and form a regulatory authority for the segment.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) reiterated its demands a day after a Parliamentary panel suggested digital market entities to desist from “anti-steering”, “deep discounting”, “self preferencing”, “search & ranking preferencing” and other practices that will impact competition in the market.

To curb anti-competitive practices in digital markets, a Parliamentary panel on Thursday proposed an ex-ante regulation, classification of “systemically important digital intermediaries” based on their revenue, market capitalisation and number of users, and a new digital competition law.