Retailers federation supports Bharat bandh on Sep 28

The Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI) Thursday announced its support for the Bharat bandh announced by small retailers and traders associations on September 28 to protest against the Flipkart-Walmart deal.

The FRAI, which claims to be representative body of around four crore micro, small and medium retailers, has appealed to the government to revoke approval to the WalmartFlipkart deal.

According to a FRAI statement, the deal would hurt traders of India, which would be impacted by discounting, loss funding and market concentration strategies adopted by e-commerce firms.

"We believe that the WalmartFlipkart deal will jeopardise the livelihoods of India's millions of retailers. Such collaborations of multinationals will increase the cost of doing business for the poor retailers and will severely impact our daily earnings," the federation said.

"We therefore appeal to central government to scarp this deal," FRAI President Ram Asre Mishra said.