NEW DELHI: A day after Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal took a dig at e-commerce giants for “displacing jobs” and “acting arrogant”, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has written a letter to various representative bodies including the Confederation of All India Industries (CII), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Nasscom, and the Retail Association of India (RAI) urging them to support the notification of the recently proposed E-commerce Rules under the Consumer
Protection Act (2020).
“We have come to know that several e-commerce companies may use the platform of your organizations to derail the process of implementation of these rules,” CAIT’s letter claimed.
The Indian government has proposed stringent measures to prevent abuse of dominance, direct selling by platforms, and banned flash sales under the new amendments.
On Sunday, the Union commerce minister minced no words in criticizing US based e-commerce firms, accusing them of using low-cost capital to dominate Indian markets, resulting in the displacement of millions of jobs.
Goyal said that in his past meetings with the representatives of big e-commerce firms, he saw a little bit of arrogance because of their ability to finance large amounts of money in certain product categories, which is detrimental to small traders and unfair.
The minister, while not naming Amazon, hit out at Jeff Bezos’ announcement of investing $1 billion in Indian markets last year.
“They have incurred losses while operating in India during the last two years and are in fact funding their own losses. So, they are doing the country no favour,” Goyal had said.