ET Telecom, February 07, 2020
While announcing a three week window period for public consultation on the proposed Competition (Amendment) Bill 2019, Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) secy Injeti Srinivas said that sectors which are impacted by digital technologies should also be assessed under the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
Speaking at a CUTS International and CIRC event on ‘Digital Economy – Hitting the reset button on competition and regulatory governance’, Srinivas further pressed for the need of digitalisation of the economy and bridging the digital divide to achieve India’s target of becoming a US $5trillion economy by 2024-25.
Ashok Kumar Gupta, one of the stakeholders at the event and Chairperson, CCI, stressed the importance of timely detection and intervention of antitrust issues in the new age digital economy to ensure inclusive growth.
Pradeep Mehta, Secretary General, CUTS International, noted competition and regulatory regimes as tools to guide markets fairly to function efficiently and promote economic growth and further pointed towards the need to redesign these tools to navigate effectively in an increasingly online and digitally enabled economy.
Gopal Krishna Agarwal, National Spokesperson – Economics Affairs, Bharatiya Janata Party iterated the need for optimal regulation in a highly disruptive digital economy. He asserted that fair competition and protection of intellectual property rights could lead to spurring domestic innovation.
Shashi Tharoor, Chairperson, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, during a panel conversation with Nitin Desai, President, CUTS Institute for Regulation and Competition (CIRC) spoke on the issues of the ‘Personal Data Protection Bill’ with respect to lack of independence of the proposed data protection authority, exemptions given to government agencies and restrictions placed on cross-border data flow among other things.
The event was jointly organised by CUTS and CIRC where the flagship biennial report on ‘Competition and Regulation in India 2019’ was released and it saw the participation of 80 to 100 representatives from civil society organisations, industry players, academicians, former bureaucrats, policy influencers and others.
CIRC, is a not for profit research and capacity building entity that assists multilateral and bilateral government and private agencies in policy formulation.
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