Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal will not meet Amazon chief Jeff Bezos who is on a three-day visit to India, government sources have confirmed.
This comes as the country’s competition regulator is investigating the alleged market distortion done by Amazon that might have hurt local traders’ interests. The trading community - a core voter base of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - has been up in arms against the deep discounts and other "trade malpractices" by Amazon.
India’s competition regulator Competition Commission of India has opened an enquiry into Amazon claiming its 'predatory pricing' affects the local traders in the country.
Traders have been raising the issue with the Indian government, which is now preparing rules to deal with deep discounts and fake products.
In a letter to Modi in November, the Confederation of All India Traders, representing about 70 million traders in India, said, “The current e-commerce market of the country is highly vitiated by unhealthy and unfair practices of companies, particularly Amazon and Flipkart.”
Highlighting alleged tax evasion, CAIT said that by selling goods at much lower prices, they are causing a “huge GST revenue loss to the government”. CAIT is strongly opposing Bezos’s India visit and holding protests nationwide.