Exclusive: Amazon's sellers to display country of origin on products from July 21

E-commerce giant Amazon has asked its sellers to mandatory display country of origin for all products from July 21, 2020. According to an email sent to sellers, the company has made it compulsory for them to mention the importer’s contact information with the product’s country of origin.

Entrackr has seen a copy of the email sent by Amazon in which it emphasized that the sellers would be required to provide information for “country of origin” for all listings. And if they fail to do so, they will be penalized and which could even be suppression of their listing. 

The instruction from the company has come 3 weeks after the government had called a meeting with the e-commerce companies to start prominently displaying the country of origin for all the goods sold online in India to which Amazon, Flipkart, and Jio had agreed to.

The mandatory display of ‘county of origin’ is a part of India’s policy to identify Chinese products. Last month, the government had made it compulsory for sellers on its e-procurement platform Government e-Marketplace or GeM to disclose the ‘country of origin’ on the products they list. 

Apart from the mandatory attributions, Amazon has also asked its sellers to label item type, manufacturer, and packer’s contact information. However, such types of information are optional and depend on the seller's choice.

While the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) had conducted two rounds of meetings with e-commerce companies on the issue and suggested a deadline of August 1, Amazon would start complying with the instruction from next Tuesday.

Flipkart had recently begun reflecting the origin of the country on selected products, but other large e-commerce companies including Snapdeal and Paytm Mall are yet to instruct sellers on their platform to follow the mandatory display of origin of products. They are likely to reach out to their sellers to do so in the next two weeks.