The government is looking at ways to promoteGeographical Indications, or GI products, on e-commerce platforms and in modern trade stores, in a bid to boost locally made products as part of its ‘Make in India’ and ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ schemes.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has called for a virtual meeting with leading e-commerce firms Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal as well as retailers such as Reliance on Wednesday to discuss ways to promote and market select GI products.
GIs are typically names or signs that correspond to products from a specific geographic location, for instance, Darjeeling tea.
“We are asking if they can help us in promoting GIs. There is no regulatory aspect to this meeting,” a senior government official said.
DPIIT has sent an email to several players inviting them to participate in the call.
The discussion of the meeting will be around identifying GIs that have maximum demand in the market and promotion and marketing of selected GI products to improve their visibility and awareness, it said.
ET has reviewed a copy of the email.
The move to promote GIs comes soon after the government mandated e-commerce firms to showcase the ‘country of origin’ of products sold on their platforms, in an attempt to improve visibility of locally made products among consumers, and to try to wean them off Chinese-made ones.
The government official told ET that e-commerce firms were already behind by two and a half years in complying with the Legal Metrology Rules that came into effect in February 2018, which had mandated the display of country of origin for all imported products.
“We have given them time till September to update the legacy listings (with country of origin tags),” the official added.
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