CAIT launches phase 2 of national campaign to boycott Chinese products

As a part of its national campaign, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) today launched the second phase of the boycott of Chinese goods across the country. The campaign, titled 'Indian Goods - Our Pride' aims to achieve a reduction in imports of Chinese manufactured goods by 1 lakh crore (13 billion USD) by December 2021.

Last year, CAIT's campaign resulted in a business loss of about Rs 70,000 crore to China as a reduction in imports of Indian entities. This campaign is an important step towards achieving Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Vocal for Local" and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat.'

In the first phase of the campaign, CAIT focused on items like grocery, kirana, FMCG products, consumer durables, crockery, gift items, toys, and footwear. They also emphasised on beauty -- cosmetics, furnishing fabric, rakhi, fire crackers, etc, which were earlier imported from China prior to 2020, and are easily replaceable by Indian manufactured goods.

National President of CAIT, BC Bhartia and National Secretary General, Praveen Khandelwal said there are four types of imports from China to India, including finished goods, raw materials, spare parts and technology products. In the second phase, CAIT has decided to boycott finished goods imported from China.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said in 2001, the import of Chinese goods into India was only $2 billion, which has now increased to $70 billion, which means that imports from China increased by 3,500 percent in just 20 years.

This clearly indicates that under a well-planned strategy, China is trying to gain control over India's retail market. However, Indian businessmen and citizens are working hard to ensure local goods flourish in the market.

They also acknowledged that India's trade and industry in the last 10 years ignored the increasing penetration of Chinese goods in India and did not try to create any alternative to these goods.

More than 40 thousand trade bodies and 8 crore traders associated with them are expected to participate in this campaign.

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