Amid stir against many e-commerce websites from a section of Federation of Chamber and Commerce in state, the FJCCI has made it clear that it was not against e-commerce as a growing market place. According to the FJCCI, the area of worry was opaque regulation and taxation laws that were creating discrimination between e-commerce and physical mode of shopping.
According to industry estimates, Jharkhand is purchaging anywhere between Rs. 3,500-4,000 crores worth goods yearly through online mode. “We are not at all against any e-commerce website like amazon.in or flipkart.com or for that matter, any online market place. We can’t be if we claim ourselves to be educated and growing retailers and traders of today. Our objection is from those irregular and opaque tax rules, which provide an edge to e-retailers on us,” said FJCCI President Pawan Kumar Sharma.
Around a dozen of Dhanbad Chamber of Commerce traders had gone on a day-long hunger strike on Wednesday this week against e-commerce portals. Traders had said online shopping portals were eating up their profits margins. They had claimed that their sales went down anywhere between 25-30 per cent because of growing activities of e-commerce websites in the state.
When asked why sections of the Federation were not in sync with the state level organization (FJCCI) as far as thought process and ideology of the organization in terms of e-commerce was concerned, Sharma tried to denounce them. He said, “Dhanbad itself is house of dozens of small federations of commerce and industries. So are other parts of state, where there are hundreds of trade unions altogether. But our members can’t defer from our core ideologies, in which opposing e-commerce of course is not one. Federation never supported them and it will not support in future also,” Sharma claimed.
Sharma said the state government needed to define borders between online and offline selling perfectly. Government not imposing taxes on goods that enter the state through online was a major area of concern and FJCCI was regularly in talks with government to define them as soon as possible. He also said that FJCCI was in conversation with Union Finance, so that the interests of small traders in the state could be protected in a better way.
FJCCI said that it was extremely important for the government to protect the interests of local traders, as Jharkhand was ranked at the top in terms of ‘ease of doing business’ as recently as Friday itself by central government. “It is not outsiders alone, for whom business environment should be turned favourable. They may come and go. Government must care for local business fraternity first, who are going to stay here,” said Sharma.