Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The exploitation of e-commerce channel by way of unethical small business practices of on-line retailers in India has led to lakh of shops getting forced to close, traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) stated on Sunday urging Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal to roll out the e-commerce policy instantly. “They (e-commerce companies) are trying to create a false narrative that (draft e-commerce) rules are stringent, will increase compliance burden, will discourage FDI in India, and malign the image of India in the global market,” BC Bhartia, National President and Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, CAIT jointly stated in a statement.
The government had last month proposed amendments to Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules that indicated stricter compliance for e-commerce businesses such as Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart, and other folks. The marketplaces have been constantly questioned by CAIT against their alleged small business malpractices. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, announcing the proposed adjustments, had categorically noted that that there was an “evident lack of regulatory oversight in e-commerce which required some urgent action”.
The draft guidelines had been in response to complaints from traders, associations, and customers against “widespread cheating and unfair trade practices being observed in the e-commerce ecosystem.” According to a Reuters report on Monday, Amazon and Tata Group had warned government officials at a meeting organised by the Consumer Affairs ministry and Invest India that tougher guidelines for on-line retailers would have a significant effect on their small business models. The report, for instance, stated that the proposed policy states e-commerce firms have to make sure none of their connected enterprises are listed as sellers on their internet websites, having said that, this could effect Amazon in unique as it holds an indirect stake in at least two of its sellers, Cloudtail and Appario.
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CAIT argued that some of the significant foreign-funded e-tailers in a quite clandestine manner are unhappy with the draft e-commerce guidelines mainly because if these guidelines are implemented, they will have to bring drastic adjustments in their current small business format which will prove to be counterproductive to their sinister game of controlling and dominating not only e-commerce trade but also the retail trade of India. “These are all useless arguments to derail the reformative measures of the government to purify the e-commerce business of India and to liberate the same from the vicious clutches of foreign-funded e-tailers and the traders across the country will resist strongly any such move initiated by vested interest parties,” Bhartia and Khandelwal added.
The draft guidelines had also mandated e-commerce businesses to provide a ranking for goods and make sure that the ranking parameters do not discriminate against domestic goods and sellers – amongst the concerns raised by CAIT earlier. The government had last year also stated that e-commerce entities will have to provide an explanation of the principal parameters which, individually or collectively, are most substantial in figuring out the ranking of goods or sellers and the relative significance of such parameters by way of an “easily and publicly available description drafted in plain and intelligible language.”