The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a national trade body representing 7 crore traders and 40,000 trade associations, has launched of a national campaign to boycott Chinese goods across the country from June 10.
CAIT says that it will not only motivate traders not to sell Chinese goods but will also urge Indian consumers to buy indigenous products as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call "Vocal for Local “.
CAIT hopes to reduce India’s imports of Chinese goods by around Rs 1 lakh crore by December 2021. To achieve this goal, CAIT has prepared a comprehensive list of about 3000 products imported from China for which Indian substitutes and alternatives are easily available. The list of 3000 products prepared by CAIT basically consists of FMCG, consumer goods, toys, festive goods, fabrics, textiles, stationery, paper, food items, electrical, electronics, builder hardware etc. They also said that Indian manufacturers have an important role in the Chinese product boycott and CAIT will work with Indian manufacturers to promote the use of indigenous goods nationwide.
CAIT has said it will also run a major campaign across the country through social media to connect more people to this campaign. The CAIT has constituted a national committee to run the nationwide campaign with its Vice Chairman Brij Mohan Agarwal as convenor, and Sumit Agrawal and Dhairysheel Patil as co-convenors, besides having senior trade leaders of all states as its members.
In the past, CAIT has protested against e-commerce players Flipkart and Amazon as well, claiming that they didn’t provide a level playing field to domestic traders. It also strongly protested against Walmart’s investment in Flipkart.