CAIT welcomes SHOPEE exit decision from India

Mail News Service

Jamshedpur, March 28:  The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has welcomed SHOPEE ‘s decision to exit from India and stated that any company that violated the sovereign law of a country and breached data collection in India would meet the same fate. CAIT also accused that certain foreign-funded companies were habitually toying with Indian laws to foster malpractices. There are a number of other foreign-funded companies who are habitually playing with Indian laws and involved in mal-practices. “Either they (foreign companies) should mend their ways or pack up and exit from the country,” said CAIT National Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal and National Secretary Suresh Sonthalia while giving their observations on the winding up of SHOPEE. It may be mentioned that CAIT had launched a determined move against SHOPEE on September 16, 2021 and pursued the matter with the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Commerce.

 Khandelwal and Sonthalia said that CAIT, in a communication to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had demanded the ouster of SHOPEE owned by the SEA Group that had substantial Chinese investment, a factor that violated the provisions of Press Note No 3 of 2020. The CAIT officials stated that in order to revise the FDI Policy, it was necessary to obtain prior approval of the (Indian) Government for any direct foreign investment including countries with whom India shared land boundaries. Both, Khandelwal and Sonthalia claimed in the communiqué to the Indian Prime Minister that SEA Holdings, the holding company of SHOPEE, had significant ownership that added up to nearly 25 percent  by TENCENT, a Chinese firm. Their communication to Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that SEA founder Forrest Li was originally Chinese but became a naturalized Singapore citizen a few years earlier. The CAIT National Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal and Secretary Suresh Sonthalia further claimed that SEA used TENCENT Cloud to store data. They mentioned in the letter to the Indian Prime Minister, “SEA’s gaming subsidiary, GARENA licenses most games from TENCENT leading to huge royalties and that this investment ensures significant control and access to data,” and added in the same vein, “providing entry to the likes of SHOPEE means compromising data and security of Indian citizens, flooding of the market with Chinese goods, anti-competitive tie-ups with large manufacturers with exclusive access — all of which is aimed to strike below the belt of our small traders who are already tottering financially due to the impact of COVID on their businesses.”