Protests will be conducted at close to 10,000 different locations across the country
Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) will conduct nationwide protests against the Walmart-Flipkart deal on July 2. CAIT office bearers said on Monday that the deal is a backdoor entry for Walmart in Indian retail market, even though Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail is not allowed in the country.
Protests will be conducted at close to 10,000 different locations across the country.
The decision was taken on the inaugural day of two-day national conference of CAIT in Ahmedabad. In a resolution passed unanimously, CAIT demanded the central government reject the deal and an e-commerce policy is framed as well as regulatory authority be formed for e-commerce sector.
CAIT said in a media statement that it will pursue the matter with both Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) so that e-commerce companies including Flipkart and its new owner Walmart should not escape from the liability of malpractices, predatory pricing and deep discounting, which has been its trade practice in all the countries, it has been operating so far.
"The e-commerce market in India remains very critical since its inception in the country due to ill designed business practices adopted by various leading e-commerce players with a single motto of creating a monopoly in retail trade by offering deep discounts and predatory pricing vitiating basic fundamentals of e-commerce and in the absence of any policy both in e-commerce and retail trade and easily circumventing the law," CAIT president BC Bhartia said in a statement.
CAIT alleged that such e-commerce platforms openly flout a provision of FDI Policy issued on March 29, 2016, which restrains them from influencing the prices. However, the central government is just a mute spectator giving these companies a free hand to play the game by their own rules. Despite the opposition from trade bodies, the government liberalized FDI in single brand retail and the Walmart-Flipkart deal could be a back-door entry for FDI in multi-brand retail, they fear.
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