Tweaking the definition of Government e-Marketplace will expand its scope, benefit MSMEs: Commerce Secretary
Commerce Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam said that there is a need to expand public procurement platform GeM and include state-level procedures and preferences in the portal so that it can help MSMEs more.
Addressing the industry body CII's National Procurement Conclave 2021, Commerce Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam said that public procurement platform Government e-Marketplace (GeM) needs to expand further and include state-level procedures and preferences in the portal so that it can help MSMEs more. He also suggested tweaking the definition of GeM to expand its scope.
"There is a need to expand further to get the specific state-level procedures and preferences on to the GeM platform so that it can expand its footprint and help MSMEs more. GeM also should have a very large mandate to expand its footprint geographically," he added.
He said that GeM is a public procurement platform but the portal can think of new directions as to how it can facilitate procurers from the rest of the world.
The commerce ministry launched GeM in August 2016 with the objective of creating an open and transparent procurement platform for the government, where so far over 24 lakh sellers and service providers are registered on the portal to sell 4,52,1302 products and several services. Over Rs 1,27,000 crore-worth of transactions have happened so far on the portal.
"I am not saying that we should compete with Flipkart or Amazon, but there could be a space. Where you (GeM) have onboarded so many lakh suppliers onto your system, can you (GeM) provide a window to the world. I know the mandate of GeM does not allow that but maybe there could be public procurement in other countries which may be requiring this," he further stated.
If something is being procured by the governments of countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Africa, it would be public procurement in some ways, "so can we tweak the definitions to actually expand this".
He expressed confidence that the platform is on the verge of becoming a global leader in many ways and said there is a huge potential for GeM as government procurement is about Rs 10-20 lakh crore annually.
"GeM only accounts for 5 percent of what is procured in government. Still a lot of market is there within the government system which GeM can expand into," Subrahmanyam said, adding that "in a way GeM is the government's internal eBay.”
The secretary also said that huge potential is there in the area of work contracts.
Currently, government departments, ministries, public sector units, state governments, and Central Armed Police Forces are allowed to carry out transactions through this portal.
The portal provides a wide range of products from office stationery to vehicles. Automobiles, computers and office furniture are currently the top product categories.
Services, including transportation, logistics, waste management, webcasting and analytical, are listed on the portal.
Edited by Kanishk Singh