Anticipating huge growth in electronic trade across boundaries, the government on Thursday said it could consider imposing duties and taxes on such transactions.

While India can maintain a liberal regime on electronic transmissions at present, this must not "preclude its options for possible methods of taxation since the future course of growth in e-commerce is impossible to visualise," said the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Thursday.

"As and when viable methods of levying duties and taxes can be found, there should be freedom to impose customs duties, excise duties, sales tax etc on electronic transmissions," the Survey said.

E-commerce comprises of business among enterprises (B2B) and companies to consumers (B2C), with the former accounting for a large proportion of such trade globally.

Ban on customs duty is applicable to digitised products, which mostly fall under the B2C category and broadly include printed matter, software, music and other media, film and video games.

In the past, such goods were transported through carrier media in the form of CDs, diskettes, tapes etc and were subjected to customs duty in importing country. But now, these products are sent electronically without being subject to any customs duty.

"With trade in this segment growing rapidly, most of the developing countries are becoming net importers of digitised products," the Survey noted.

"India's position on non-imposition of customs duty on electronic transmission has been that given the inherent advantage India has in e-commerce, it can maintain a liberal regime (at present)," it said.

Economic Survey 2007-08: Complete Coverage