New Delhi. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday raided the premises of some “key vendors” working for e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart as part of its probe into foreign investment “violations”. Official sources gave this information.
He said that as part of the action, a total of 19 premises of these “preferential” sellers located in Delhi, Gurugram and Panchkula (Haryana), Hyderabad (Telangana) and Bengaluru (Karnataka) were searched.
Sources said that the ED has started investigation on several complaints against two big e-commerce companies under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). It has been alleged that these companies are violating India’s FDI (foreign direct investment) rules by “directly or indirectly influencing the selling price of goods or services and by not providing level playing field to all sellers.” Earlier also there have been reports that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is also investigating the alleged anti-competitive practices of e-commerce companies.
CCI works to ensure fair trading practices in all market sectors. Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and mobile retail vendors’ organization AIMRA had also filed a petition in CCI some time ago, demanding immediate suspension of the operations of Flipkart and Amazon, as they alleged that these companies were offering huge discounts on the products. Affects the business by giving.
He said that due to these methods of sale, a market of mobile phones is being created which is causing loss to the government exchequer because the companies involved in such market evade taxes. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal had recently expressed the same concern and questioned Amazon’s announcement of investing one billion dollars in India. He had said that the American retailer company is not doing any great service to the Indian economy, but is compensating for the losses it has suffered in the country.
He had said in August that their huge losses in India indicate monopolization of the market by manipulative low prices, which is not good for the country as it affects crores of small retailers. The minister had said that with the rapidly growing online retail trade in the country, “are we going to create huge social disruption with this massive growth of e-commerce.”