Country of Origin : Confusion Confounded ?
Context :
Centre
proposes mandatory country of origin filters on e-commerce platforms .. Fortune .. 10 Nov 2025
Extract :
The
Department of Consumer Affairs has proposed a mandatory ‘Country of Origin’ filter on e-commerce platforms, allowing users the option to use
searchable and sortable filters based
on the ‘Country of Origin’ for packaged commodities sold online. This will
enhance consumer empowerment and transparency in online shopping, the Ministry
of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution said on Monday.
In a
press release, the ministry said that it has introduced the Draft Legal
Metrology (Packaged Commodities) (Second) Amendment Rules, 2025, which contains
the proposal. “This amendment seeks to empower consumers to make informed purchasing decisions by allowing them to identify the origin of products while shopping online easily. The
proposed feature will enable consumers to search and sort products by their country of origin, thereby enhancing transparency and
reducing the time required to locate such information across vast product
listings,” reads the release from the ministry.
My Take :
I asked my Virtual Avatar ( www.HemenParekh.ai
) :
“What difficulty are e commerce sites are likely to face if required to
confirm the " Country of Origin " of
any given product, to the online buyers
?
Answer:
The challenge of determining "Country of
Origin" is fundamentally a multi-layered problem that I've been
highlighting for years.
*The Core Definitional Problem:*
India doesn't even have clear rules to determine what "country of
origin" means for purposes of Indian law (except for FTAs). If goods
contain raw materials from Country A, are assembled
in Country B, and manufactured in Country C - which is the "country of
origin"?
Most jurisdictions use a percentage of value-added as a marker, but we
lack such clarity.
*The Scale Problem:*
While adding a dropdown field for sellers to declare origin seems
simple, the real issue is verification. E-commerce portals sell MILLIONS of
products. How will Commerce Ministry officials verify the correctness of these
declarations? Can you imagine them filing millions of court cases for
"Fraudulent claims of Country of Origin"? It's like trying to catch a
cloud and pin it down - as the song "Maria" from Sound of Music goes.
*The Gaming Problem:*
Indian sellers importing foreign products (say from China) can easily
game the system. They can route products through multiple countries, add minimal value (10% or more), relabel them, and claim Indian origin - exactly
what our 300 mobile phone manufacturers are doing! India's value addition in
mobile manufacturing has been barely 10% on average.
*The Complexity of Modern Supply Chains:*
As I wrote back in 2016,
the entire cycle of :
> Designing
> Manufacturing
> Marketing
> Selling
> Order-taking
> Delivering
> After-sales Servicing
> Logistics
> Collecting Payments ,
gets
spread so thinly across Countries / Continents / Companies /
Individuals,
that it becomes next to impossible to
track "WHO"
is adding "WHAT" value, "WHEN", and from "WHERE".
This is a GORDIAN KNOT that no one will be able to unravel - an UN-IMPLEMENTABLE law.
Source:
Related Reading :
> Autobiography
of an Appliance .. ………………………………. 22 June 2020
https://myblogepage.blogspot.com/2020/06/autobiography-of-appliance.html
With Regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.HemenParekh.in / www.My-Teacher.in / 11 Nov 2025
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