Author: NitiCentral Staff
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: September 27, 2012
URL: http://www.niticentral.com/2012/09/fdi-in-retail-kills-jobs-manmohan.html

Reaffirming its commitment to economic reforms that serve to revive growth and development of the country, the BJP on Thursday regretted that the Prime Minister, despite seeking and securing the main opposition party’s support on crucial policy issues, never acted on them.

“On several occasions, the Prime Minister met us on key reform issues, we expressed our agreement after proposing some changes. But he never acted on them. Instead, after 8 years of policy paralysis, he has come up with FDI in multi-brand retail, which is not acceptable to anybody,” said Arun Jaitley, leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, while introducing the Economic Resolution at the BJP’s national council meeting in Faridabad.

Seconding the resolution, senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu released correspondence between Federation of Associations of Maharashtra and Manmohan Singh when he was leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha during NDA rule. Manmohan Singh had categorically told the federation when it had expressed apprehensions about the possibility of FDI being allowed in retail, “We should not permit FDI in retail trade.” He had further mentioned, “India does not require this kind of reforms which would, rather than creating employment, destroy employment.”

During at last two meetings with delegations of the federation, Manmohan Singh had assured that he and his party would not allow FDI in multi-brand retail. He pointed out that he had raised the issue in the Rajya Sabha on 18-19 December 2002 and had “obtained an assurance from the then Finance Minister that there was no proposal before the Government for permitting FDI in retail trade”. He also made his position clear in a letter to the Federation.

Describing FDI in multi-brand retail as “yet another anti-people decision of the government”, the resolution says, “it has been taken under foreign pressure. The government had made a solemn promise in both houses of Parliament that it would talk to all political parties and state governments to arrive at a consensus. This promise stands broken.”

The BJP says in its resolution that “allowing FDI in multi-brand retail will have an adverse impact on retail trade and create large-scale unemployment… In india, retail trade is the third largest employer and more than 10 million establishments give direct and indirect employment to over 40 million people. This employment is under threat when we look at the global experience of multi-brand retail.”