‘$1 bn promotional finance in Amazon India to crush retail trade’

Traders' body CAIT on Wednesday alleged that the $1 billion investment announced by Amazon chief Jeff Bezos is "promotional finance" to Amazon India to crush retail trade and encourage predatory pricing and deep discounting.

Confederation Of All India Traders (CAIT), which has been opposing Bezos' visit to India, said more than 5 lakh traders supported its protests in about 300 cities, and about 5,000 trade associations participated.

The USD 1 billion investment by Bezos for small and medium businesses is not an investment, but promotional finance to Amazon India to crush retail trade and encourage his team in India to do more predatory pricing and deep discounting, and to go on violating FDI policy, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said.

He termed the target of exporting USD 10 billion worth of Make in India goods by 2025 "ridiculous".

Bezos wants to build a false and wrong narrative to show that Amazon is pro small traders, Khandelwal claimed.

Amazon.com Inc chief Jeff Bezos on Wednesday announced USD 1 billion (over Rs 7,000 crore) investment in India to help bring small and medium businesses online and committed to exporting USD 10 billion worth of India-made goods by 2025.

Before this, the online retail giant had committed USD 5.5 billion investments in India Amazon's most important market outside of the US and a key growth driver.

Bezos, who began a three-day visit to India on Tuesday by visiting Mahatma Gandhi memorial at Rajghat here, was speaking at the SMBhav event - an Amazon India gathering for small and medium businesses.