Silence of governments on e-commerce and GST irks traders

Jamshedpur: The continuous arbitrariness and violation of rules and laws by foreign funded e-commerce companies in the e-commerce trade of the Country and the increasing complexity of GST are haunting the trading community and has brought the domestic trade at crossroads of ruin and bankruptcy. Even after repeated representations, both Central and State Governments have taken no appropriate measure and are silent on these issues which has triggered the anger of the Traders across the Country. Deeply aggrieved with this attitude, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) while expressing adoption of zero tolerance policy by the trading community, has announced to launch a nationwide protest campaign on core issues of business community including e-commerce & GST, the strategy of which will be finalized at a two days “National Traders Conference ” convened by the CAIT on 11-12 January,2022. About 100 prominent trade leaders from all States and national or of the prominent business leaders of all the states in Kanpur, the industrial capital of Uttar Pradesh.

Praveen Khandelwal national general secretary and Suresh Sonthalia national secretary said that it seems that both Central & State Governments of the Country have succumbed to the foreign e-commerce companies. Union Commerce Minister Shri Piyush Goyal has left no stone unturned in warning the e-commerce companies while addressing various national and international forums for the last two years and has been strongly vocal that the law will take its own course if they are not obeyed, but for now  the country is still waiting for the law to work and actions to be taken. Continuous disregard of rules and regulations by e-commerce companies, unrestricted sale of marijuana and other banned items on e-commerce platform, dodging Central & State Governments with GST revenue, no action has been taken yet, even after the evidence given by CAIT. An utter silence has been kept by the Governments which corroborate the fact that there is domestic or foreign pressure on the governments which is giving a free hand to these companies to openly violate and exploit India’s laws and in a  situation like this the proverb that “Rome is burning and Nero is playing the flute” seems to fit everyone  at all levels.

Khandelwal and Sonthalia said that the present form of GST is very complex and in contrast to the GST structure which was explained to CAIT by the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the year 2017, which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but it is highly regretted that the current GST structure stands highly contradictory to the said announcement. After the demise of Mr. Jaitley, the GST Council has stopped consulting traders and are taking decisions arbitrarily having no match with the ground realties of trade. The GST structure is highly distorted having various anomalies. The proposal to increase the tax rates of GST on textiles and footwear is one such testimony.