Government, RBI in talks to boost e-commerce exports

The commerce ministry is in discussions with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to facilitate e-commerce exports by liberalising the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) guidelines, Santosh Kumar Sarangi, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said.

“A few days back we had a meeting with the entire team of RBI officials who deal with this. There is a lot of liberalisation which is coming in the RBI guidelines and we should be seeing the results in next two to three months with regard to ecommerce (export) policies,” Sarangi said at the 1st Asia Pacific e-commerce policy summit organised by economic think tank ICRIER.

Sarangi said that for business to business (B2B) shipments, the RBI has a FEMA guideline under which payments have to be realised within a certain period of time (nine months). “But in commerce that time may get expanded,” Sarangi said, indicating that the commerce department is working with the RBI to liberalise the guideline for ecommerce exports.