On Thursday, former finance minister P Chidambaram took a dig at Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal for his "no favour" jibe at Amazon Inc founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
Chidambaram said that Piyush Goyal should snub more people to boost imports and exports. Chidambaram while hitting out at Piyush Goyal said, "Commerce Minister snubbing Amazon's Jeff Bezos makes for a great headline in the world's media."
“The snub will reverse the five successive month decline in imports and the eight successive month decline in exports,” Chidambaram said. He said the commerce minister should snub more people "to boost imports and exports".
Chidambaram concluded his series of tweets saying that Goyal's snub meant nothing for Bezos and other tycoons of big multinationals, who live under "the biggest snubber of all time - President Trump".
A day after the world's richest person Jeff Bezos announced fresh USD 1 billion investment in India, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said his firm Amazon was not doing a favour to the country by the investments and questioned how the online retailing major could incur such "big" losses but for its predatory pricing.
"They (Amazon) may have put in a billion dollars but if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year, then jolly well will have to finance that billion dollar. So, it is not as if they are doing a favour to India when they invest a billion dollars," he said at the Raisina Dialogue. The USD 1 billion investment by Amazon.com to help bring small and medium businesses online is on the top of USD 5.5 billion funding it had previously announced.
The minister wondered why an e-commerce market place model, where a firm provides an IT platform for buyers and sellers, incurring huge losses adding that it needs to be looked upon. "They are investing money over the last few years also in warehousing and certain other activities, which is welcome and good. But if they are bringing in money largely to finance losses and those losses in an e-commerce market place model," Goyal said. He added that in a fair market place model in a turnover of 10 billion dollars, if a company is incurring a loss of billion dollars, it "certainly raises questions, where the loss came from".
(Inputs from Agencies)
