A strong growth trajectory has been demonstrated by GeM since its inception, Prashant Kumar Singh, Chief Executive Officer, Government e-Marketplace (GeM) said at the MSME Business Conclave by the TheSpuzz. GeM, had a turnover of Rs 1,06,647 crore, In FY 21-22, Singh said. Going forward the targets are above Rs 2 lakh crore in the upcoming financial year.
In the last four years, GeM has shown consistent growth in the buyer and seller ecosystem with more than 53,000 buyers and more than 45 lakh sellers. There have been one crore transactions completed to date. Healthy growth in procurement was witnessed through GeM -Gross Merchandise Value in buyer segments i.e. Centre, PSEs, and State – he shared.
In order to discipline the buyers to reach a reasonable level of satisfaction among sellers in payment, the Chief Executive officer said that in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance it is coming up with the ‘Penal Interest’ rule in which any buyer who delays payment by more than 10 days will be charged 1 percent interest per month. He will also have to answer why the payment was delayed.
In the next one-year GeM will be onboarding the rest of the sellers and enable them to do transactions without delay in payment. GeM has witnessed 220% growth in the number of sellers in FY- 22 and Maharashtra is the biggest contributor, Singh said.
GEM has also undertaken multiple measures to better platform functionalities and customer experience from custom bids to forward action, regular training sessions for buyers and sellers, and a customer helpdesk system. Moreover, there also have been major technology upgrades like the use of artificial intelligence-based controls on the portal to churn out unscrupulous buyers.
As for Chinese sellers, Singh said that it is trying to weed out such sellers as much as possible.
From the business initiative demo sessions were organised with CPSEs and a key account management process was rolled out for central ministries.
GeM further looks forward to registering panchayats by integrating eGram Swaraj (eGS) with GeM, collaborating with India Post, and Common service Centers for the last mile engagement and enabling a greater share of ‘Make In India’.