On the pattern of the National Population Register, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAT) will prepare a data of traders and their employees engaged in business activities in all states and union territories across the country to better address the basic problems of trading community with the government so that traders can can seek formulation of better policies for the business class based on that data. CAIT has decided to launch this campaign on the suggestion of Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Mr. Piyush Goyal, which he gave at a Traders conference organized by CAIT in New Delhi on 27 January. The CAIT has termed Mr. Goyal’s suggestion as very logical and this data will be of great importance in seeking facilities and policy support from the Central and State Governments for the retail trade of the country.
National President of CAT Mr. BC Bhartia and Secretary General Mr. Praveen Khandelwal told that according to a survey of NSSO there are about 7 crore small businesses in the country and it employs about 45 crore people and generating an annual turnover of about 45 lakh crore rupees It is highly regretted that so far no government has taken a single step to prepare data for such an important sector of the country’s economy. There is a separate policy and a Ministry for all other sections related to the economy except retail trade. Once the data is secured, the CAIT will very strongly demand to form a separate Ministry for Internal Trade and will raise other issues of the traders.
Mr. Bhartia and Mr. Khandelwal told that this nationwide “Traders Population Campaign” of CAIT will start from March 1 and will run across the country till September 30! CAIT will create a mobile application to collect merchants’ details through which traders across the country will be able to enter their details in it. This campaign will be run with the help of more than 40 thousand merchant organizations spread across the country. The data sought includes the name of the business establishment, owner’s name, how many people they have in the family, address, phone number, mobile number, what item is traded, website and email address, how many employees work and how many people are in their family etc. and all this data will remain highly confidential and CAIT will be able to use it as required. With this type of data, there will be complete data of how many traders are in the country, how many people are employed, how much business is done, and in what items across the country, etc. Beside mobile application, the CAIT will also deploy feet on street to obtain data
