Transactions in GeM portal touched 40,000 crores as the government takes steps to bring transparency in public procurement activities. The government looks forward to increasing the turnover and portal in the coming years.
GeM Portal
The procurement of goods and services by Ministries and Departments, Public Sector Undertakings and other government bodies takes place through GeM website. Launched in 2016 by the commerce ministry, Gem is an online platform that facilitates the procurement of goods and services.
Currently there are 3.24 lakh vendors and 40,745 government buyer organizations registered on this platform. Further, the portal has over 19 lakh products across 5,274 categories listed. Apart from this, there are 21,317 services listed across 116 service categories listed on this platform.
Transaction Worth Rs 40,000 crores
Expenditure Secretary T.V. Somanathan declared that transactions worth Rs 40,000 crore has taken place through Gem. Further, the portal has electronic bids of 1,00,000 tenders from state governments. Also, it has Rs 18-19 lakh crore per annum tendering from the Central Public Procurement Portal (CPPP). The global procurement economy values around USD 10 trillion and in India it accounts for one-fifth of the GDP.
PPP Challenges
T.V. Somanathan added that India needs to work on ‘economy without delay’. Further, he mentioned that how unanticipated risk of Public-Private Partnership is a major challenge. Also, PPPs are important for infrastructural developments. However, despite due diligence, PPPs continue to suffer through contractual disputes. Further, Commerce minister Piyush Goyal stated that such a transparent solution has resulted in saving around 15-25%. Micro and small sellers account for 52.65 percent of the orders on GeM portals.
Future Efforts
MSME ministry is also looking forward to establishing an online platform- Bharat craft for helping MSMEs scale and export products. Further, this project will be integrated with GeM to cut duplication and cost. Also, the government has taken the GeM Samvaad initiative to get more MSE sellers on board to increase their market. Further, the government has decided to welcome private companies on the GeM portal to compete with the likes of IndiaMART and Moglix.
In all, despite the success, the government needs to do a lot to bring increase efficiency in procurement activities.