The Ministry of Economy is working on a draft law On E-commerce. As Eka Kubusidze, Head of Telecommunications, Information and Modern Technologies Department at Ministry of Economy Development of Georgia told BMG, they plan the Parliament to adopt the law this year.
The new bill will regulate e-commerce in Georgia. According to Kubusidze, the purpose of the bill is not to set regulations, but to regulate the sector at the legislative level.
In addition, the law will provide protection of consumers' rights and the National Competition Agency will be a kind of supervisory body in the protection of their rights.
"There is no e-commerce legislation in the country. In particular, there is no regulatory framework to regulate this sector. The law will relieve intermediary service providers of unnecessary liability. These can be telecom operators, as well as e-commerce platforms that provide technical support to customers and are an intermediate link between them and service providers. The European directive also states that providers of such intermediate services should be released from liability if they do not interfere in the content. For example, if you buy a product on any Georgian site, the conductor company that provided you with the internet, as well as the supplier company may have hired another company as a host, they will not have responsibilities. The bill introduces the definitions of "casher", "conductor" and "hoster". They will provide intermediate services in e-commerce and will be released from unnecessary responsibilities,” said Kubusidze.
According to the draft law prepared by the Ministry of Economy, the service provider will be obliged to post information about itself in order to be traceable to the customer if necessary.
"Service providers will know what kind of information they are required to post on the site in accordance with the law, and if they do not do so, they will know that they have a controller in the form of a competition agency. The draft law also defines the procedure for concluding an electronic contract between the customer and the service company. In this case, the customer will also have the right to make some changes to the contract for a certain period of time,” said a representative of the Ministry of Economy.
