Amazon’s $1 billion investment in India no big favour, says Piyush Goyal

NEW DELHI : Amazon hasn’t done India any big favours by investing $1 billion in the country, its trade minister said on Thursday, laying bare the tensions with the US online retail giant during a visit by its CEO Jeff Bezos.

Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart are facing mounting criticism from India’s brick-and-mortar retailers, which accuse the US giants of violating Indian law by racking up billions of dollars of losses to fund deep discounts and discriminating against small sellers. The companies deny the allegations.

“They may have put in a billion dollars but then if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year then they jolly well have to finance that billion dollars,” Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal told a security conference in New Delhi.