E-commerce firms may be allowed to sell non-essential goods

Restrictions on e-commerce firms to deliver only essential goods will be lifted with certain conditions from April 20, according to the latest order from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). These new enabling guidelines will be applicable till May 3 when Lockdown 2.0 ends.

Previous notifications from the MHA had specified that e-commerce firms would only be allowed to sell essential goods – food, pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.

But the latest order is devoid of any such classification of essential and non-essential items for e-commerce firms.

Government officials told ET that e-commerce marketplaces would not be restricted in terms of the items they could sell, as long as they were following strict social distancing and had other precautions in place.

“There is absence of any kind of classification of goods that e-commerce operators will be allowed to sell,” said a senior executive of an e-commerce firm. “The government seems to have understood that consumers are buying only what they need the most at this point of time.”

However, there remains some ambiguity on whether online sellers who make available products on e-commerce marketplaces will be allowed to operate during the lockdown, unless they are selling essentials. Some firms said they had approached the MHA for clarification on the same.

An industry executive told ET that players like Flipkart and Amazon have a lot of stocks lying in their warehouses that could be mobilized even if sellers aren’t allowed to operate. Others said that while the movement of goods was no longer restricted, operations of sellers could be an issue.

The MHA’s guidelines, said that additional activities would be operationalised by states, union territories or district administrations based on compliance to existing guidelines on lockdown measures. However, so far only Odisha and Goa have allowed e-commerce firms to sell all products.

“We have to wait for states to notify whether sale of all products will be allowed in keeping with MHA’s guidelines,” said an executive of another large e-commerce marketplace. “We have sought for clarifications on some of the other guidelines in the latest order.”