After supermarket giant Walmart, it is online retail major Amazon which has begun lobbying with the US lawmakers to seek their support for facilitating its “foreign direct investment in India“.
According to lobby disclosure reports filed with the US Senate, Amazon.com and its group entities including Amazon Corporate LLC have been lobbying on various issues since at least year 2000.
However, it was only in the last quarter, ended December 31, 2013, when its lobbying issues included “foreign direct investment in India”, shows the latest disclosure report dated January 22, 2014.
During this quarter, Amazon spent a total amount of $960,000 (over Rs six crore) on numerous lobbying issues, which included “issues related to free trade agreements”, “Transaltantic Trade and Investment Partnership”, as also matters relating to various Acts and proposals in the US.
Among others, Amazon lobbied with the US Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce, the Department of State and the US House of Representatives on these issues.
During entire 2013, Amazon spent a total amount of $3.45 million on lobbying, while such expenses have been mostly rising since the year 2000 when it began lobbying, shows the disclosure reports filed with the Senate.
The total lobbying expenses during these 13 years exceed $21.5 million (about Rs 136 crore), but any Indian issue has figured among the “specific lobbying issues” in these reports for the first time ever.
Amazon’s lobbying in the US comes at a time when Indian government has floated a discussion paper on allowing FDI in e-commerce retail business in the country. A final decision would be taken after taking into account responses to this discussion paper.
Earlier in November 2013, Amazon had said it is ‘engaging’ with the Indian government for relaxing of FDI norms in the e-commerce space, saying such a move would help it begin “retailing products” as well, in addition to its current marketplace business model.
The company launched operations in India in June last year with its marketplace model, under which Amazon.in does not sell products directly to customers but only provides a platform to sellers.
The issue of lobbying among the US lawmakers for FDI in India had snowballed into a major political controversy late in 2012 after such disclosures by Walmart came to the fore.
The government later announced a probe into Walmart’s lobbying activities, but the inquiry remained inconclusive in absence of sufficient evidence for any wrongdoings.
Lobbying is legally permitted in the US, but the companies and their lobbyists need to mandatorily file disclosure reports every quarter for such activities.
Interestingly, Walmart did not lobby on any India-specific issues during the last quarter, when its total lobbying expenses stood at $1.95 million and one of the issue for lobby included “discussions regarding investments overseas”.