A major Indian trade body has sought an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of his meeting with global e-commerce giant Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
In a letter to Modi, the umbrella organisation, representing about 70 million traders in India, has said it wants an opportunity to apprise him of unfair trade practices being followed by Amazon in the country.
“The current e-commerce market of the country is highly vitiated by unhealthy and unfair practices of companies, particularly Amazon and Flipkart”, reads the letter from the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT).
Highlighting alleged tax evasion by these players, CAIT said that by selling goods at much lower prices, they are causing “huge GST revenue loss to the government”.
Jeff Bezos is likely to meet Prime Minister Modi during his upcoming visit to India in January next year.
Bezos, for his part, is looking for regulatory stability in India.
“Whatever the regulations are, they are stable in time and that's one of the things we're hoping will now be true. We'll see”, Bezos told reporters earlier this week in Washington.
The company, headquartered in Seattle, is embroiled in high competition with arch-rival and India-founded e-commerce firm Flipkart. However, both firms are in a legal tangle over alleged violations of FDI norms in India.
According to the new FDI policy, which is aimed at safeguarding the interests of offline retailers and small manufacturers, e-commerce firms are restricted from indulging in predatory pricing and deep discounting.
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which advocates for small traders and businesses in India, said these e-commerce giants have repeatedly indulged in practices that have converted their marketplaces into inventory-based models (a platform where the owner owns the products and sells it on its platform) in clear violation of the country's FDI policy.