IndiaRetailBiz

ICRIER (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations), the 25 years old, autonomous, policy oriented, not-for-profit research organisation, which among others carries out research on subjects like Financial Liberization and Integration, has been mandated by the Union Commerce Ministry’s Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, with the task of studying the impact of ‘big’ retail on small scale operators. This follows the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent directive the Ministry on the subject.

The Prime Minister’s direction to the Ministry came after the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi wrote a letter to the prime minister asking him to undertake such a study subsequent to the world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart signing an MOU with Bharti Enterprises for its foray into Indian retail sector.

The study to be conducted by the Council would cover the impact of opening the retail sector on consumers, suppliers, pricing of products as well as its impact on the organised and unorganised retail and traders and dislocation of people employed in the sector. “ICRIER has been asked to take into account various aspects of the retail industry and its affect on several elements of the economy. It is essentially a study on big-versus-small rather than foreign-versus-domestic retail,” said Mr Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce, while giving details of the assignment..

“I had mooted the idea of a holistic study in a recent Parliamentary consultative committee meeting,” added Kamal Nath.

“The policy on FDI is reviewed on a continuing basis and that inter-ministerial consultations on policy issues is an ongoing process,” informed Kamal Nath in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

One can expect to hear a lot on the subject in the coming days, particularly after the Congress party’s defeat in the recently held elections in the states of Uttrakhand and Punjab.