With a strong mandate to oppose global e-commerce companies for their violative actions and business policies, more than 100 top trade leaders of all States will have head hunt sessions on February 23, 24 at New Delhi at a two days National Traders Conference convened by the Confederation of All India Traders ( CAIT). The conference will be inaugurated by Union Minister Smriti Irani who will be delivering a key note address laying greater emphasis on greater adoption and acceptance of ‘Atmnirbhar Bharat’, vocal on local and Digital India vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said CAIT.

 

The two-day conference is all set to declare launching of a national movement on traders issues among 8 crore traders of the country through participation of more than 40,000 trade associations. CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said the current scenario of e-commerce suffered with various mal-practices and complications of Goods and Services Tax (GST) have challenged the very existence of retail trade India and giving much pain to the traders. The failure of Governments in the country to address these crucial issues have generated much anguish and resentment among the business community across and has compelled the CAIT for launching an aggressive national campaign. Since Central Government is a merely a policy making body, the larger focus of the campaign will be on State Governments as trade is a State subject and State Governments are implementing authority. The campaign will also attacking the political discourse of the country because so far the political parties have kept a total silence on these two issues.

 

Spelling out the agenda of the meeting, Bhartia and Khandelwal both said that the top 100 trade leaders will have extensive deliberations and will understand the amendment made in GST Act and Income Tax Act by Union Budget 2022, Complications of GST, adverse impact of current e-commerce trade on offline traders having illegal and unethical way of doing business by foreign e-commerce companies at the core, failure of Mudra scheme reaching out to traders, consideration of issues and concerns emerged out of rules framed by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) particularly for jewelary and footwear trade, issues and concerns under Food Safety and Standard Act. Several other issues will be discussed at length including demand to create a separate tax slab under Income Tax for traders, need of a National Retail Policy and an E-commerce Policy with an affective Regulatory Authorit.

 

Other trade related issues like replacement of all sorts of trade licenses with only one license, abrogation of outdated laws concerning trade, support policies of the Government for access to finances to traders on reduced rate of interest, empowerment of women entrepreneurs, hand holding of start ups, effective pension and insurance scheme for traders, upgradation and modernisation of existing format of retail trade will also be discussed at the two-day conference, CAIT added.