The world's largest retail chain, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, announced it was negotatiating with its Indian partner Bharti Enterprises Pvt on it future business plans. It projects that an agreement would be finalized in the next few weeks.
Wal-Mart currently has what it termed as a 'very good relationship' with the Indian conglomerate. There were already a number of discussion with its billionaire owner Sunil Mittal in the past few days to determine the next steps for the partnership. This was confirmed by Wal-Mart Asia operations head Scott Price yesterday. He made these remarks after local media was insinuating that Bharti was seeking to exit the venture because of lack of progress in the expansion plans of Wal-Mart in India.
Through a telephone interview, Price said, "We are having very productive discussions with Bharti, there are multiple options and we are working through what those options might be. I would hope probably in the next several weeks we will reach an agreement with them. But no matter what happens, there is no pressure in the relationship,"
Despite the new India law allowing foreign retailers to own majority shareholdings in multibrand retail chains, no licenses have yet been applied for by any of the retailers. Othher government moves to foster foreign investments include guidelines in sourcing, infrastructure investments and store locations. This was designed to entice Wal-Mart, Tesco and other global chains to open shop in India.
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