Push for 'country of origin' tag for eGoods

BENGALURU: The government will hold a meeting with leading ecommerce marketplaces on Wednesday in order to persuade them to prominently display the ‘country of origin’ of products on their platforms, in a bid to curb imports from China.
The move to have Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and others display the ‘country of origin’ follows a mandate by the government’s own e-procurement portal Government e-Marketplace (GeM) for sellers to specify the ‘country of origin’ of goods.

“From a technical standpoint, exposing the field for ‘country of origin’ on our platform won’t be hard at all, and neither will it be to mandate that all new product listings must specify this,” said a senior ecommerce executive. “But what about the millions of product listings that exist on different platforms? Updating those will take time.”

Like with GeM, the onus of specifying the country of origin of goods will lie with sellers on the marketplace. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade could ask ecommerce marketplaces to enable the feature for all new product listings, industry insiders told ET.