Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said that the government is not concerned about flash sales on online platforms but is against predatory pricing and other cheating methods used by e-retailers to restrict consumer choices. He also said that often consumers purchasing goods on the e-marketplace platform to avail benefits of flash sales are diverted to entities preferred or promoted by the online retailer, which is cheating and against the foreign direct investment rules.
Goyal said that there are two objections, one is following the practice of predatory pricing by dumping of goods, and the other is methods to restrict consumer choices. He said ‘we are only trying to stop that cheating through the e-commerce policy that we are coming out with’. Citing China, he said dumping of goods at 'very' low prices for a long period of time kills domestic manufacturing and forces consumers to buy goods at high prices.
He further said that foreign e-commerce players have deep pockets and for them investing a few billion dollars in India and registering 'huge' losses are not a problem. They are only into accretion of customers at any prices and cost, he said. He reiterated that the country's FDI laws have to be respected by the e-commerce players and the marketplace has to operate as a marketplace. He said ‘the marketplace players can sell products as their own single brand platform, we have no problem, that is perfectly possible and permitted, but you cannot mix the marketplace model with your single brand retail model’.
