Business Desk :
A high-powered committee sits in its maiden meeting this week to craft strategies to enact a digital commerce law and constitute a regulatory body for the scam-stuck e-commerce sector.
According to officials, the meeting is due for October 05 at the commerce ministry with additional secretary (IIT) AHM Shafiquzzaman, also the convener of the panel, in the chair.
When asked, a senior official said: “We’ve initiated work on a proposed act and a separate regulatory body. The panel sits this week to take the next course of action.” As was instructed by the ministry, the 16-member committee will prepare a draft of the digital commerce act within the next two months.
It also will chalk up a structure and a modus operandi of the anticipated regulatory authority within eight weeks.
The proposed act and the body will be formed with an eye to governing e-commerce and bring discipline in the crisis-ridden sector.
Besides, the committee will submit a set of recommendations within the next two weeks to resolve the ongoing online trade-related complications.
On September 22, an inter-ministerial review meeting at the commerce ministry suggested the formation of a separate regulator and a law for dot-com operations.
Presently, the country has no law but the Digital Commerce Policy-2020 and the Digital Commerce Operational Guide-2021 to govern the growing e-commerce sector to check any fraudulence.
The authorities concerned have recently detected acts of fraudulence by a good number of dot-coms in the name of e-commerce and thus taken punitive action against the perpetrators.
The shifty platforms include Evaly, Dhamaka, e-Orange, Sirajganj Shop, Aladiner Prodip, Boom Boom, Adyen Mart, Needs, Qcoom.com and Alesha Mart.
Commerce minister Tipu Munshi recently spoke of the adequate steps taken to restrain such e-commerce platforms from cheating clients in future.
“We won’t give any chance to do the same,” he asserted.
Every company must get registered or take a unique business identification number from the ministry to operate such an online business in the country.
