- The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has demanded ban on online festive sales.
- The e-commerce festive sales are claimed to violate the FDI policy.
- CAIT has urged the Commerce Minister to look into the e-commerce discounts.
he festive seasons on Amazon and Flipkart violate FDI norms, says an organisation that purportedly looks after the interests of India offline traders. The organisation, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), is demanding that government should ban the upcoming festive sales on e-commerce websites, and written a letter to the Commerce Minister.
Within the next few days, both Amazon and Flipkart will begin their festive season sales for 2019. Both the Amazon Great Indian Festival sale and Flipkart Big Billion Days sale have hefty discounts and price cuts in store for shoppers across a variety of products, including electronics, clothing, appliances and more. The sales are great for Indian consumers and have become popular.
However, their popularity has not gone down well with offline traders who have seen consumers preferring e-commerce sites to do their shopping because of discounts and better product choices.
Now, the traders want government to help them. According to a report from IANS, a news agency, CAIT has urged the Commerce Minister to look into the e-commerce discounts, urging that they violate the FDI policy. CAIT has sought a ban on these sales.
"Holding such sales and offering deep discounts are clear violations of Press Note No.2 of FDI policy 2018. The CAIT has earlier written to Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal to ban the declared festival sales by these e-commerce portals," CAIT said in a statement. "Since these e-commerce companies are not owners of the inventory how can they offer deep discounts on the inventory hold by the sellers registered on their platform. As per policy, it should be the seller offering discounts but in this case the discounts are offered by e-commerce companies which is again a violation of e-commerce policy."
A few days ago both Amazon and Flipkart had defended their sale policies. Both the platforms noted that their festive sales "empower the sellers on their respective platforms to decide the prices and offer their choice of selection to customers at the prices they deem fit and offer best value of their products to consumers."
However, CAIT said in response that the statement given by these two companies "are devoid of any logic and just an eyewash to keep right the wrong practices they are conducting on their platform."
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