The Confederation of All India Traders through a statement said that retail trade has faced a loss of Rs. 3.15 lakh crores during the nationwide lockdown.
Despite the loss, B.C.Bhartia, National President and Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary of CAIT said that the Confederation supports the decision of Prime Minister.
“It is a logical and extremely important step desired under the present circumstances due to COVID-19 and we have assured Prime Minister that the traders under any circumstances will continue to run supply chain of essential goods in a most efficient and effective manner so that citizens of the country may not face any difficulty in obtaining essential commodities,” CAIT said.
India has 7 crore traders and 1.5 crore of them deal with essential commodities. But due to difficulties in getting passes and logistics issues, only 40 lakh traders dealing with essentials commodities functioned.
The statement further mentioned that “… nearly 80 percent of the employees of traders have migrated to their villages at the time of earlier lockdown while only 20 percent of employees are working with traders for supply of essential goods”