India’s hopes for retaining the right to implement data localisation laws remain alive as Indian negotiators on Thursday declined to agree to the e-commerce chapter of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement. The e-commerce chapter contains clauses that, if India had agreed to them, would have prevented it from implementing data localisation rules on companies doing business in India. People aware of the developments in Bangkok told The Hindu that, while India did not agree to the e-commerce chapter clauses, negotiations were now entering a frantic phase because there were still several uncertainties related to the cross-border transfer of electronic information that remained. While the e-commerce chapter has some clauses that affect data localisation, India has been trying to water these down. Clouding the issue further is that the annexe on financial services, already agreed upon by all the RCEP countries, says that the domestic laws of a country regarding keeping financial data within a country supersede the RCEP agreement.

Source: The Hindu October 11, 2019 16:38 UTC