Forums write to PM on checking profiteering by big corporate houses

The World MSME Forum and All Industries and Trade Forum in a letter written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi have requested to save 1.4 billion people from the clutches of about 100 big companies.

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Badish Jindal, president of both these organisations, has written the letter to PM on the Republic Day, stating that during the last 10 years, the policies were drafted for profiteering large corporates at the cost of common man.

“Majority of such companies are in banking, petroleum and steel. These 100 companies are making equivalent money to 100 crore Indians. As per our World MSME Forum report, these companies are responsible for trade imbalance, inflation and poverty in India. These companies are keeping margins so high that Indian exporters are not in a position to compete with China in the world market. The top in the list of such companies are public and private sector banks. The government is silently supporting the banks by increasing the repo rate. This has resulted in the public sector banks earning a profit of Rs 1.41 lakh crore and private banks earning Rs 1.78 lakh crore. This is 2% of the GDP of India. There is no country in the world where the banks share 2% of the GDP of the country as profit,” rued Jindal in the letter.

Adding further, he said that the government had no control over the interest rate of these banks. They are charging from 9 per cent to 20 per cent from small borrowers. The repo rate in India is 6.5 per cent, whereas in China it was 1.69 per cent. Due to high interest rates the demand in India is too low. If the interest rates came down, then there could be a high demand for housing and vehicles.

The second main reason for inflation and lower GDP is oil companies indulging in profiteering by charging a profit of Rs 15 on petrol per litre and Rs 12 on diesel. This comes to around 53 per cent of the cost of production. These public sector oil companies have earned Rs 86,000 crore during 2023-24.

Jindal added that the third sector which was hitting the economy worst was the steel sector. The Indian steel companies have earned a profit of Rs 1.50 lakh crore during the last financial year. These companies have a good say in government and as a result, they keep on imposing restrictions on cheap imported steel. Due to this, these companies have a monopoly in domestic steel market and charge a profit of more than 15 per cent on steel.