New Delhi: Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), the largest trader’s organization in the country has castigated Pricewaterhouse Coopers(PwC) for its “baseless” and “concocted” report on e-commerce in an attempt to mislead the country.

In a statement the Confederation said ” We have come across various media reports quoted Pricewaterhouse Coopers(PwC) that India’s e commerce curbs could hit online sales by $46 billion by 2022. The said report is quite baseless, concocted and jugglery of figures and at attempt by the PWC to frighten the concerned sections and is highly misleading the Country”-said the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) in a statement sharply criticising the PWC and its report. The CAIT said that the report has come at a time when the Government is taking serious and stiff steps to enforce the FDI policy in e commerce.

CAIT National President B.C.Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal questioned that the FDI policy is in implementation since 2016 and the recent Press Note of the Government is merely a clarification of the policy. There is nothing new in the policy then why the PWC is making an analysis now and calling the clarifications as curbs. The report of the PWC is nothing but an exercise of indirectly influencing and pressurising the Government to bring amendments as sought by global e commerce players. In other words PWC is also a part of unholy nexus of global e commerce companies, US Chambers, Indian Industry Organisations and foreign investors.

Both Bhartia and Khandelwal said that PWC has said that they have used data provided by the Industry and publicly available information and not conducted any independent report. ” We call upon PWC to make public the draft analysis , Industry resources , what kind of data made available and what is the information on public domain on the basis of which the said report has been released in order to validate the report”-said the trade leaders.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that it is a trend that whenever the Government takes any step not to the liking of global companies or corporate houses, so called research organisations like PWC release such kind of reports trying to discourage the Government and others to take any step. It is interesting to note that in such reports they never divulge the resource, sample size or basic fundamentals of the analysis.

“We highly refute the said report and analysis and challenge the PWC for an open debate on this report at any open platform. PWC is attempting to mislead the nation and policy makers to help global e commerce players. It is a sinister design of the PWC and a highly manipulated game of global players and PWC is pretending to be their mouth piece”-said trade leaders.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that PWC should have proved its figures before releasing with such “manufactured” report. “If there is inflation of figures the PWC need to publicly apologise for running a campaign for vested interest groups.”