Digital trade should be open, must address privacy concerns: Sunil Bharti Mittal

NEW DELHI: Sunil Bharti Mittal, former chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), has called for open global digital trade, but one which takes into account the security and privacy needs of citizens in each country.Mittal, who will assume the role of honorary chairman of ICC from July 1, told ET in an interview that the world trade order could break down if the US doesn’t back down from its protectionist stance and start a constructive dialogue. He added that India was among the most open markets in the world, has the strength and should retaliate to the US moves to levy import duties on some of its products.Mittal though disagreed with the calls within India and other countries for localization of data servers in the name of data privacy and security.“Localization of data servers is becoming a raging debate. But in a digital world, there should no borders. Digital trade cannot be fragmented trade, it has got to be a global trade,” Mittal said. He added that companies such as Google, Facebook and WhatsApp will find it difficult to operate in an environment which needs servers to be set up locally in each country. “Facebook is one example. You can’t have an Indian Facebook, Chinese Facebook and European Facebook. That is the challenge they are having,” said Mittal.The comments from Mittal, who was replaced as ICC chairman by Unilever chief executive Paul Polman from June 21, come amid a raging debate around data privacy and security in several countries, including in India, with many calling for servers storing data of citizens to be located within the country.“We are telling countries it’s (localization of servers) a waste of money, which will increase the cost to serve the customers,” he said, adding that security issues can be resolved by having a slim server which can mirror. Paris-based ICC, among the world’s largest business organisations representing more than six million private sector members in more than 100 countries, in fact is actively working with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to draw up the contours of global digital trade. Mittal said ICC was tasked with coming up with new instruments for global digital trade - where one buys from an ecommerce platform and the good is delivered from another country - to deal with issues such as defective products, registering grievances, wrong or no products being delivered from another part of the world.“You don’t know who the supplier is, who to sue? Who is going to give you the insurance? Where do you get your refunds if you get a wrong product, what happens to its warranty,” he explained. “When you talk about trillion of dollars of digital trade, we still don’t have proper rule book for that.” In his meetings within the ICC and outside with global business and political leaders, Mittal has tried to dispel the general impression that India is against digital trade discussions and facilitation.“I have taken it upon myself to ensure that India’s position is well articulated, that we don’t mind digital trade or e-commerce but we want time to understand it. So, the impression that India is opposed to it, which it is not. But we (India) don’t want to rush into it,” he added. The broad discussions around an open digital trade come at a time the narrative around global trade is around protectionism and trade barriers. The world is already seeing the initial signs of a trade war, triggered by the US imposition of import duties on some products from China, the European Union and India, among other countries. While China has threatened retaliation, India has joined the EU and some of its trading partners in raising tariffs on some US products. “Trump’s thing that we want fair trade not free trade, these things are nothing but favouritism for protectionism. His treatment of G7. We expect this to probably continue till G20 later this year at Buenos Aires,” said Mittal.He said that India should “start flexing its muscles” in the face of US protectionism. “You can’t have a situation where you say visas should be restricted, Indian automobile components are being questioned for import duties into the US. You can’t suddenly clamp without knowing that there are bigger markets (like India) for Facebook and Google and all the tech companies. It can’t be a one-way street,” said Mittal.

from The Economic Times https://ift.tt/2Md3jjI