In the backdrop of the current volatile e-commerce scenario in the country, experts and entrepreneurs have opined that the business does not need new laws; rather proper enforcement of the existing laws could help restore discipline in the burgeoning online trade. A news report published in a national daily on Sunday said that lack of monitoring of some errant e-commerce sites, including Evaly, Dhamaka and e-orange, has left over a million customers and several thousand e-commerce merchants defrauded as the online sites owe them several thousand crores of taka with their owners either in jail or absconding.
According to experts and entrepreneurs, the capacity of the Directorate of National Consumers’ Right Protection (DNCRP), the state agency responsible for hearing and addressing consumer complaints about goods and services, needs to be enhanced to weed out deceitful practices in the e-commerce sector. It needs to enforce laws strictly. Besides, the central bank also has a big role to play in ensuring that consumers are not fooled as the advance payments to e-commerce companies are made through approved payment gateways. Were the institutional capacity of the agencies robust enough and their integrity beyond question, the current storm over the e-commerce sector would not have brewed. But they have failed.
The recent e-commerce incidents have taken place right in front of the eyes of the Bangladesh Bank. Their negligence was obvious. Here the biggest capacity and leadership failure came from the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU). After a newspaper report in August last year unveiled that Evaly’s business model was like a multi-level marketing model company, the BFIU had suspended the company’s transactions for a month citing the money laundering prevention law. But the authority responsible for overseeing the c-commerce transactions found nothing wrong after scrutinising them. Using that law, the BFIU could have extended the suspension and taken legal action against Evaly. Unemployment is a big problem in our country. Thus, there is no alternative to e-commerce trading for youths to earn income. By restoring confidence between e-commerce merchants and customers a healthy online platform can be set up to create jobs for thousands of educated people in the country.
