Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The Modi government’s public procurement portal Government eMarketplace (GeM) is now in the method of hunting at integrating with panchayats in the nation to fulfill the latter’s neighborhood procurement requirements as aspect of its expansion, according to a prime executive at the marketplace. GeM at the moment has almost 56,000 purchasers which includes government organisations, departments, and public sector units fulfilling their procurement requirements from close to a whopping 29 lakh sellers which includes 7.2 lakh micro and little sellers promoting on the platform.
“We are integrating with panchayats for their procurement that currently happens directly at a smaller scale offline. We would be having complete visibility over their product-wise needs and categories along with payments made electronically from every corner of the country. We can add a filter for their needs specifically and can onboard their government vendors in terms of handholding them and enabling them with digital knowledge for online procurement. It will significantly add to the growth of the marketplace,” Prashant Kumar Singh, Chief Executive Officer, GeM told TheSpuzz Online.
There are reportedly more than 2.5 lakh gram panchayats at the moment in the nation. Earlier this year at an occasion, Singh had stated that Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal had recommended encouraging panchayats as effectively to procure goods from the GeM portal. In May last year, former Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had launched a collection of each day utility solutions made by rural self-support groups on the portal.
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Singh stated GeM’s gross merchandise worth (GMV) for the duration of the 1st half of FY22 has currently crossed the complete FY21 GMV and is effectively on its path to reach Rs 1 lakh crore GMV target this monetary year.
“In H1 FY22 we surpassed the entire FY21 GMV of Rs 38,000-crore. We sold goods worth Rs 40,000 crore in H1 itself. In Q3 last FY, the GMV stood at Rs 8,000-9,000 crore and this Q3 we can easily target at least Rs 30,000 crore and can go up to Rs 45,000 crore in Q4 this year. We earlier thought that integration of Indian Railways’ procurement with GeM would take us to the target but I think we can achieve that without that as well,” stated Singh.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal in June this year in a efficiency critique meeting of GeM had stated that bidding by Railways’ purchasers via GeM is most likely to start by August finish and that the integration will “usher in a lot of savings for the public exchequer.” The minister had noted that the integration could see about Rs 50,000 crore of annual procurement by Railways completed on line. However, the integration is anticipated to take some time.
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“Looking at a very modest run rate of maybe 1.5 times of H1 GMV, which can grow up to 3X times, our Rs 1 lakh crore per annum target is very much achievable. We have kept Rs 2 lakh crore target next year,” Singh added.
MSEs at the moment have a share of 56.50 per cent in GeM’s general transaction worth of Rs 1.44 lakh crore, according to the information from the portal. So far, 77.47 lakh orders have been processed via GeM. The portal was launched in August 2016 to make the public procurement method transparent and effortless in the nation for purchasers and sellers. Among all MSE sellers, artisans are also becoming a important element in the seller base on the portal. “There are also a substantial group of artisans, weavers, and scheduled caste and scheduled tribe entrepreneurs that are coming up in a big way. Our main focus remains on how to increase penetration and handholding for MSE sellers,” Singh stated.