Trade minister Piyush Goyal: Amazon's plan to invest $1bn in India is "no great favour"

NEW DELHI: Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, arrived in India on Tuesday amid protests and demonstrations by business owners and traders which claimed that expansion of the e-commerce giant will destroy small retailers as local retailers will not be able to compete with discount offers provided by Amazon.

Bezos during his visit announced that Amazon will make an incremental investment of $1bn in India in five years to help small & medium businesses go digital. He also pledged that India-made goods worth $10 billion will be exported through his company by 2025.

"They may have put in a billion dollars but then if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year then they jolly well have to finance that billion dollars," Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal said during a security conference in New Delhi.

"So it's not as if they are doing a great favour to India when they invest a billion dollars."

Bezos also pledged that India-made goods worth $10 billion will be exported through his company by 2025.

The investment hopes to “bring millions of more people into the future prosperity of India and at the same time expose the world to the ‘Make in India’ products that represent India’s rich, diverse culture,” he said to an audience at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi. According to media reports, PM Narendra Modi will not meet Bezos during his two-day visit to the country. Competition Commission of India (CCI) along with other parties have raised concerns against Amazon.“The Commission observes that the exclusive arrangements between smartphone/mobile phone brands and e-commerce platform/select sellers selling exclusively on either of the platforms, as demonstrated in the information, coupled with the allegation of linkages between these preferred sellers and OPs (opposite parties) alleged by the Informant merit an investigation,” the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said in an order,” CCI stated in an order which accused Flipkart and Amazon of alleged malpractices.

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