Piyush Goyal: ‘Arrogant’ US e-commerce giants flout Indian legal guidelines

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has ratcheted up the warmth on US e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart, accusing them of vanity and of flouting native legal guidelines by indulging in predatory pricing practices.
Goyal stated firms have been utilizing their scale and entry to massive swimming pools of low-cost capital to bask in predatory pricing practices “to the detriment of mom-and-pop stores”.
“A number of these large e-commerce companies have come into India and very blatantly flouted the laws of the land in more ways than one,” he informed a digital occasion late on Saturday. “I’ve had several engagements with these large companies, particularly the American ones, and I can see a little bit of arrogance,” he stated.
Goyal didn’t straight title Amazon.com or Walmart Inc’s Flipkart — the 2 dominant e-commerce gamers in India — or specify which legal guidelines had been flouted. But his feedback come at a time of rising clamour from small Indian merchants and retailers, who accuse the US giants of circumventing Indian client safety and competitors legal guidelines.

Amazon and Flipkart didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon Goyal’s scathing criticism.
The two firms have denied the allegations levelled towards them by the merchants. Goyal additionally criticised firms for indulging in “forum shopping” in courts and failing to adjust to an investigation launched by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
Flipkart and Amazon have appealed towards the CCI’s bid to restart an investigation into their enterprise practices, after a decide this month dismissed the businesses’ unique pleas.
“To my mind, if they have nothing to hide, if they are doing honest business practices, why don’t they respond to the CCI?” Goyal stated on the digital occasion organised by the Stanford India Policy and Economics Club.
His feedback got here days after the Centre unveiled a brand new set of e-commerce rules that would dent each Amazon and Flipkart’s ambitions in India, and drive the duo to assessment sure enterprise constructions.

Separately, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, the Confederation of All India Traders, accused e-commerce firms of treating India like a “banana republic” with weak legal guidelines.
The physique urged the federal government to make sure that the proposed e-commerce guidelines weren’t diluted, regardless of the lobbying efforts of ecommerce giants.
The US-India Business Council, a prime US foyer group, described India’s proposed new e-commerce guidelines as regarding in an inner memo this week.