Representatives from several major retailers on Thursday participated in a round-table meeting chaired by Commerce & Industry Minister Anand Sharma.

The representatives from international retail giants like Walmart, Carrefour, Tesco, Aditya Birla Group, Bharti and Pantaloon, siught some changes in the FDI policy for multi-brand retail.

They said sourcing rules for multi-brand should be the same as they are for single-brand retail, and that foreign investors shouldn't be expected to invest more than 50 per cent of the first tranche of their investments in back-end infrastructure.

The list of attendees includes Carrefour India's MD Jean Noel, Landmark's MD Vinai Singh, Aditya Birla Retail's CFO Atul Daga.

After the meeting, Commerce & Industry Minister Mr. Sharma said that there was sufficient space to address retailers' those concerns.

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Sharma said, "The objective of the policy is to encourage investments, job creation, benefit to the farmers and benefit to the consumers. Therefore, we have sufficient space to address those concerns."

Rajan Bharti Mittal, Vice-Chairman and managing director of Bharti Enterprises said that 2-3 major points were raised during the meeting, including 30 per cent sourcing issue. He said norm of 30 per cent sourcing should be preferable and not obligatory.

The government has allowed 100 per cent FDI in single-brand, but the same has been limited to 51 per cent in multi-brand retail.