New e-commerce law soon to be finalized

ISTANBUL

Work on new legislation on e-commerce, which would include regulations protecting local companies, is expected to be finalized and submitted to parliament soon.

The new law aims to curb the fast growth in the industry and guard against the competition, according to daily Milliyet.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in April unveiled plans to introduce new rules for e-commerce.

The size of the fast-growing e-commerce business in Turkey, where 72 percent of the population use the internet, reached 381.5 billion Turkish Liras.

The new legislation will introduce restrictions for certain products, which are sold on e-commerce platforms, and additional taxes on companies based on their revenues.

Harsher fines will also be imposed on the companies that sell fake products on such platforms. The legislation will also forbid companies from engaging in promotional activities that hurt competition and using consumer data to create unfair competition.

The law also foresees support for local companies, who will enter the e-commerce market for the first time, in the forms of grants and by ensuring easy access to loans and incentives, the daily said.

The largest players in the local market are foreign-owned companies, and the new legislation is designed to address this foreign domination.

Authorities will brief new entrants on the success of the e-commerce site PttAVM.com, owned by Turkey’s postal service PTT, as an example for them to follow as a business model.

PttAVM.com has more than 35,000 suppliers and over 15 million members and offers more than 30 million products with some 2 billion liras in revenue.

Sales by mail order and the internet surged 26.4 percent from a year ago, and they increased by 3.2 percent on a monthly basis in March, according to the latest data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

Overall retail sales volume in the country exhibited an annual increase of 2.5 percent in the month.