CAIT releases face masks, tea glasses for trains; launches national campaign to boycott Chinese goods

New Delhi: The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Wednesday launched a national campaign for boycott of Chinese goods across the country

The campaign titled "Indian Goods- Our Pride" aims to achieve reduction in imports of Chinese manufactured goods by 1 lakh crore (USD 13bn) by December 2021, CAIT said in a release.

CAIT said, this campaign is an important step towards making the call for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Vocal for Local" and "AatmanirbharBharat " successful.

In the first phase of this campaign, CAIT has made a list of 3000 items which are currently imported from China and which are easily replaceable by Indian manufactured goods. CAIT will make traders and people across the country aware that instead of Chinese goods, Indian products should be sold and bought.

BC Bhartia, National President of CAIT and Praveen Khandelwal, National Secretary General in a video press conference held in New Delhi said that there are four types of imports from China to India. The goods which are imported include finished goods, raw materials, spare parts and technology products. CAIT has decided to boycott finished goods imported from China in the first phase.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that in the year 2001, the import of Chinese goods into India was only $ 2 billion, which has now increased to $ 70 billion at present which means that imports from China increased by 3500 percent in only 20 years. 

For the last four years, CAIT has been carrying out a campaign for boycott of Chinese commodities from time to time, the positive result of which is that China's imports in India have decreased by $ 6 billion in the last two years. In the year 2018, this import was 76 billion dollars which is currently 70 billion dollars.

Both business leaders said that in view of the current circumstances of the corona epidemic in the country, this campaign will be currently run on video conferences and social media, especially on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp.