Traders body calls CCI ‘spineless’ for dropping investigation against Amazon

• The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) is a union of 40,000 trade associations and seven crore members.
• The antitrust watchdog was investigating Amazon for selling private labels on its website.
• The traders’ association has demanded an in-depth study on the working of the CCI.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) — a union of 40,000 trade associations and seven crore members — has called the Competition Commission of India (CCI) “spineless” and “toothless” for dropping its investigation against US-based ecommerce titan Amazon.

The antitrust watchdog was looking into the allegations raised in a Reuters report that highlighted that Amazon copied products of rival manufacturers and used its internal data to boost product lines and gain an edge over other sellers in India. The company used the results to increase sales of its own brand, Solimo.

Selling private labels on its website is prohibited under the Press Note 2 of the Indian forign direct investment (FDI) guidelines.

CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal in a joint statement said that it is highly unfortunate that the CCI has dropped such an important investigation against law offender Amazon after starting a suo-moto case based on a global news agency's report that was published in October 2021.

"We are at a loss to understand why the government and agencies are keeping a complete silence on the daylight violations of policy, rules and laws by Amazon and others," they added.

The traders’ association has demanded an in-depth study on the working of the CCI and remedial measures to make the watchdog more “efficient” and “accountable” like Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that the traders of India are extremely perturbed that the Indian retail ecosystem has been repeatedly left vulnerable simply because anti-trust regulator CCI has failed to discharge its duties.

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