The online platform for public procurement has seen a growth of 72% in orders placed by various state governments.
The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is betting big on states, services and Central Public Sector Enterprises among its key business platforms to drive an ambitious Rs 1.75 lakh crore of gross merchandise value (GMV), P.K. Singh, CEO, GeM told The Sunday Guardian. The public procurement platform for government buyers which has transformed procurement in India by effective use of technology, digitization of processes and analytics since its inception to achieve a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GMV in FY23 alone, is now strategising to unlock the next wave of growth.
“The first focus area is state Governments,” Singh told The Sunday Guardian, as he outlined the focus areas of GeM in FY24. “In the last five-six months, our engagement has with state stakeholders has gained traction. The second is services. There is phenomenal growth and a huge promise ahead because we claim that every service is available here on GeM,” says Singh. Of the largest services order placed with the portal is a Rs 20,402 crore one by National Thermal Power Corporation for mine development and operations for 25 years. The portal has also seen ash and coal transportation bids worth more than Rs 1800 crore by NTPC and orders worth Rs 500 crore have been finalised while the rest are under technical and financial evaluation. “The third focus area is CPSEs which will be a growth engine,” Singh points out. One very important service we are offering is ‘forward auction’ where you can auction anything from land to the grain that Food Corporation of India sells in the open market. That can be done on this portal. So far almost 4000 plus auctions have been done successfully and we have achieved more than 150 crore transactions,” Singh told The Sunday Guardian.
The online platform for public procurement has seen a growth of 72 per cent in number of orders placed by various state Governments from 6.88 lakh to 11.8 lakh for the period March-January 2022-23 as against March-January 2021-22. The platform envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and launched on 9 August, 2016 by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has cumulatively surpassed Rs 3 lakh crore GMV with its objective of creating an inclusive, efficient, and transparent platform for the buyers and sellers to carry out procurement activities in a fair and competitive manner, finding an overwhelming support from stakeholders. The total number of transactions on GeM has also crossed 1.3 crore, on the back of over 66,000 government buyer organisations and more than 58 lakh sellers and service providers on the portal offering a diverse range of goods and services which has expanded to over 11,000 product categories with more than 29 lakh listed products, as well as over 270 service categories with more than 2.5 lakh service offerings.
Going ahead, integration with other Government initiatives will be key to future growth, Singh told The Sunday Guardian. “We are already in the process of doing that. First let’s talk about ONDC because that is a platform of platforms. The idea is that GeM sellers should be active in that platform as well and to facilitate that, there is the seller app. What initially we are planning is that we will use the seller app of the common service centre. A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between GeM, ONDC and CSCs which will facilitate the transfer of data to CSC portal. With the consent of the seller, we will upload them on the ONDC portal as well. That process is on and we are working on it,” Singh added. The procurement platform successfully integrates with more than 1.5 lakh India Post offices and 5.2 lakh plus village level entrepreneurs via the CSCs for last-mile outreach and service delivery.
The online portal is also gearing up for participation in the G20 initiatives, says Singh. “On the G20 front specifically, we are engaged with the anti-corruption working group which is being piloted by the Department of Personnel & Training and GeM is one area that we are going to showcase. The entire preparation will be done towards our intent to inform the people how this transparency and this fairness has disrupted the earlier procurement system, how corruption has been stopped and what steps are being taken to further tighten the process,” Singh told The Sunday Guardian.
Asked on the plans to expand participation of ministries like Aviation and Heavy Industry, Singh informed The Sunday Guardian that both the ministries are well engaged with GeM and the numbers were increasing. “On the services part, there is hiring of aircraft on our portal. That is also going fine with the Indian army hiring almost 830 aircraft for the entire year with an order value of Rs 143 crore,” he added.
Singh admitted that obstacles remain in a diversified economy like India, in terms of the range of sectors, buyers and sellers. “Challenges are far and many. At the level of the state Governments particularly, we see reluctance to come to the portal. A general buyer also may question the need to come to the portal as they may feel their own system is sufficient. Convincing the buyer that this alternative is perhaps better than their current system, takes time and that is an impediment. We are gradually overcoming that. By presenting hard facts like the time and cost overruns that can be avoided. Once you present the facts, the buyers tend to come on board,” he said.
Singh also pointed out that there is an effort to learn from best practices of other online places though their ecosystem is completely different from GeM. “We are working on revamping what the screen shows, what item is placed and where. We are also trying to improve the navigation experience of a user, by making the flow a seamless one. We are also trying to improve those,” says Singh. Moreover, innovations have been adopted in GeM through automation and digitization of processes which has led to higher process efficiencies, better information sharing, improved transparency, reduced process cycle times, and a higher level of trust among bidders.