ISLAMABAD: On Tuesday, the Islamabad High Court gave the federal government two weeks to present its response to a petition filed against the country’s lack of e-commerce facilities, according to media sources.

IHC CJ Athar Minallah issued notices to the Ministries of Commerce and Information Technology noting that the petitioner was grieved because the respondents had failed to fulfill the mandatory requirements set out in the e-Commerce Policy 2019.

The petition, a citizen named Junaied Hafeez, informed the court that Pakistan did not have access to Amazon, the world’s biggest e-commerce company.

He elaborated that because of the country’s unsecured payment system, Amazon had banned anyone from Pakistan from logging in to its website for a decade.

“No official negotiations of offer to start operations of Amazon or PayPal in Pakistan have been made thus far,” the petition read.

“It transpires that the government failed [to take] this simple yet logical towards globalisation and modernisation.”

The petitioner pointed out that the e-commerce industry had grown to more than $4 trillion worldwide but Pakistan had failed to cash in on the opportunities offered by this sector because of the “lack of interest” of the government.

He also pleaded with the court that the e-commerce program be found faulty and ineffective in 2019.

“The e-Commerce Policy, 2019 is defective and flawed in many aspects inasmuch as the same admits to amend the existing laws of consumer protection. In compassion, China Russia and many other countries have special provisions in their consumer protection laws pertaining to e-commerce,”

The petitioner argued that data protection laws were a precedent condition for a successful and growing e-commerce industry. “However, there is no data protection law in Pakistan,” he added.