Metro Cash & Carry gets Bengal licence

Metro Cash & Carry, the German wholesale retailer, received its Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) licence today on condition that the minimum bill amount for Metro Cash & Carry, per item and per customer, should not be less than Rs 1,000 and only to traders with Regulated Market Committee (RMC) licence.

Left Front constituent Forward Bloc (FB), which runs West Bengal's agriculture marketing board, and CPI(M) leaders, today decided to renew Metro Cash & Carry's Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) licence, but to protect small traders in the city, the State Agriculture Marketing Board decided to impose the conditions on Metro.

Metro Cash & Carry, on its part, will open its first outlet in Kolkata in 6-8 weeks.

According to a release issued by Metro after receiving its APMC licence, "We are keen to start our operations to demonstrate the benefits of our business-to-business concept to our professional business customers in Kolkata. We have approximately 350 trained local employees to serve our registered professional business customers. We should have the outlet fully up and running in six–eight weeks."

In addition, Metro will roll out a special 'Kirana' training program to help kiranas enhance their business by educating them in terms of pricing policy, goods storage, assortment as well as marketing issues and microfinance.

Previously, the company has invested in training programs for more than 40,000 sheep farmers as well as 1,150 fishing crews from India and helped to vaccinate and de-worm over 900,000 sheep and goats.

Earlier Forward Bloc had suggested the minimum bill amount for Metro Cash & Carry, per item and per customer, at Rs 5,000. The German wholesaler's representatives, however, declined to accept the condition at a meeting with the government and the Bloc-run agri-marketing board. Metro officials had said accepting the term would go against the business strategies the company followed in other cities.

Metro's outlets in Bangalore and Hyderabad have a Rs 1,000 minimum bill threshold, but it is for multi-item sale.

Two other conditions reportedly are that Metro cannot enter the retail market or engage in contract farming. Another is that its buyers must obtain the board's licence.

Also, Metro reportedly is expected to abide by the provisions of the Agricultural Produces Marketing Control Act, which means it must procure farm goods from board-run regulated markets and provide regular information on its stocks and prices to board officials.

Metro Cash & Carry entered the Indian market in 2003. Besides the forthcoming new outlet in Kolkata, the company operates two wholesale centres in Bangalore, one in Hyderabad and one in Mumbai.

"Metro Cash & Carry wholesale centres are open exclusively for professional business customers, all of them duly registered and provided with a customer identification card. This means that the company does not sell to household customers. Metro caters to target groups of hotels, restaurants, caterers as well as Kirana stores and other small retailers by offering a wide assortment of 18,000 articles comprising of food and non food products," Metro's release added.