Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Based on a comparison of 22 products available on different portals including GeM, prices of 10 products were around 9.5 per cent lower on the government’s business-to-business marketplace vis-a-vis other portals.
Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Prices of certain goods available on MSME-dominated government’s digital procurement portal Government eMarketplace (GeM) were found to be lower than other online platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, and company websites, said Economic Survey 2021-22 on Monday. Based on a comparison of 22 products available on different portals including GeM, prices of 10 products were around 9.5 per cent lower on the government’s business-to-business marketplace vis-a-vis other portals. In the 2020-21 Economic Survey, the prices of these products were on an average 3 per cent lower in comparison to Amazon, Flipkart and company websites.
“What we do is look through the prices on the GeM portal and compare it with the ones we have on Amazon, Flipkart and so on to see whether there is a large deviation in prices. One of the things we found that by and large they are in the same ballpark and if anything, the prices on GeM portal is actually slightly lower than you get on Amazon or Flipkart, suggesting a lot of transparency and also savings for the government,” said Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser in his remarks during the press conference on Monday after the presentation of the survey.
In a table comparing prices of products on GeM and other portals as of January 6, 2022, Parker Jotter Standard Ball Pen, Rorito Greetz Gel Pen Maxtron Gold Robotic Fluid Ink System Pen –Blue, Samsung Basic Television TV 43 Inch LED Backlit LCD, Milton 1500ml thermos, Nilkamal Dustbin 60 Litres, Bajaj Pulsar 220 F, Godrej Interio Elite Mid Back Chair, Godrej Interio Steel Almirah 2400 mm (Slide N Store Compact Plus Wardrobe), Godrej interio rhine 3-seater recliner, and Ambrane 27000mAh Li-Polymer Powerbank with Type C were cheaper on Gem than other digital platforms, the survey showed. However, the other 12 products had higher prices on GeM vis-a-vis other platforms.
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“These results are broadly in line with the assessment of GeM conducted by the World Bank, which found that GeM enabled an average savings of 9.75 per cent on the median price for the period between February 2019 and January 2020. The maximum savings in the top five categories ranged from 23.5 per cent to 60.5 per cent. The study attributed this, in large part, to increased participation per bid and better price discovery,” the survey said.
As per GeM data, there are 36.7 lakh MSME and other sellers, of which 7.47 lakh are micro and small enterprise (MSE) sellers and 57,578 buyers on the platform. The current transaction value was Rs 1,87,509 crore with MSE order value of 56 per cent.
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