Lobby Bill of Wal-Mart Hit Around 125 Crore Rupees to Seek Entry into India

Wal-Mart had filed the lobbying disclosure report with US Senate and it was found that the retail giant had incurred around 25 million dollar or approximately 125 crore Rupees in the lobbying activities. These lobbying activities also included issues which were associated with increased access to the Indian markets for investments.

Wal-Mart, the retail giant across the world was struggling continuously for initialising its supermarket in India and since 2008 it is lobbying with US lawmakers to seek entry into Indian markets which are highly lucrative. In previous quarter which had ended on 30 September 2012, Wal-Mart had spent 1.65 million dollar or around 10 crore Rupees on different lobbying issues and these also included discussions in context with FDI in India.

During that quarter, Wal-Mart had lobbied with various bodies for the case and these included the US Department of State, the US Senate, the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the US House of Representatives. In general, companies are free to lobby the case in different bodies, agencies or departments in US, but they are supposed to disclose the reports about lobbying activities every quarter with US Senate.

As of now, in 2012, Wal-Mart had spent over 3 million dollar or around 18 crore Rupees on different lobbying activities which also included the activities associated with India. According to the recent lobbying disclosure reports of Wal-mart, it had continuously lobbied in activities so that it could seek entry into the Indian markets since 2008, except for certain quarters in the year 2009.

It was also disclosed in the report that India was one of the preferred destinations for international retailers that offered an accelerated retail growth of around 15-20 percent in coming five years.