Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has released a draft National E-commerce Policy with aims to create a framework for achieving holistic growth of the e-commerce sector along with existing policies of Make in India and Digital India. The draft addresses six broad issues of the e-commerce ecosystem: Data, Infrastructure development, E-commerce marketplaces, Regulatory issues, Stimulating domestic digital economy and Export promotion through e-commerce. 

DoT has issued instructions liberalising import norms for prototype, sample products and test and measurement equipment in licence-exempt bands without the need of ‘equipment type approval (ETA)’ in a bid to help promote `Make in India’.  The department also enabled ETA through self-certification for import of commercial and finished products.

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has issued the list of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) standards which are applicable for components of solar photovoltaic (PV) applications. The list includes six products along with Indian Standard Number and the Title of Indian Standard.

Minister of State of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, provided information on the Issues and Challenges to WTO.  The WTO and the global trading system are facing serious challenges in terms of unilateral measures and counter measures by some members, deadlock in important areas of negotiations and ongoing impasse in the appointment of members of the Appellate Body of WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism.

India has sought investments from German companies in areas including smart cities and construction of airports to increase economic cooperation between the countries. India also expressed keenness to increase collaboration with Germany in areas such as smart cities, technology for green energy etc. Currently, 80 Indian companies operate in Germany.

ID Tech and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has signed MoU to identify and enhance joint research and development in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).  Under this MoU, IITRPR and ID Tech will jointly work on value creation for major Government initiatives across smart cities, as well as for the logistics and transportation domain, by leveraging advanced technologies.

Trade body FICCI and consulting major KPMG jointly released a report titled  ‘Cyber security in smart cities’ presenting a five-point action plan for smart cities to keep pace with cybersecurity needs, and build a cyber-resilient and trusted environment across the entire value chain.

Government has approved the proposal for setting up a national mission on transformative mobility and battery storage, to drive clean, connected, shared, sustainable and holistic mobility initiatives. Apart from this, government has also approved creation of Phased Manufacturing Program (PMP) for 5 years till 2024 to support setting up of a few large-scale, export-competitive integrated batteries and cell-manufacturing Giga plants in India.

As part of the road map under the phased manufacturing programme (PMP), Government has notified phased increase in basic customs duty on parts of electric passenger vehicles to be assembled in India to 15% from April 2020 and 10% on imported lithium-ion cells by April 2021 to promote domestic manufacturing of EVs.  The notification also entails doubling the basic customs duty on completely built units of electric buses and trucks to 50% from April 2020.

The government's think-tank NITI Aayog has unveiled a Model Concession Agreement (MCA) for introducing electric buses for public transportation on PPP mode on operational expenditure (per km basis) model. The Aayog stated that the model document has been developed based on international best practices to provide cleaner, more efficient, and affordable public transportation.