By Inside Retail Asia
Indonesia is planning to ban goods transactions on social media under new trade regulations, the deputy trade minister told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday.
Ministers have repeatedly said that e-commerce sellers using predatory pricing on social media platforms were threatening offline markets in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
Current trade regulations do not specifically cover direct transactions on social media.
“Social media and social commerce cannot be combined,” Jerry Sambuaga, deputy minister of trade, told the parliament, using the example of sellers using “live” features on the short video platform TikTok to sell goods.
“Revisions to the trade regulations that are currently under way will firmly and explicitly ban this,” Sambuaga said.
In response, TikTok said that separating social media and e-commerce into different platforms would hamper innovation and it hoped the government will provide a level playing field for the company.
“It would also disadvantage Indonesian merchants and consumers,” TikTok Indonesia spokesperson Anggini Setiawan told Reuters on Wednesday.
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