“The railways presently spend about Rs 70,000 crore per annum on procurements and the integration of the system with the GeM will lead to saving of at least 10-15% which is almost Rs 10,000 crore, Goyal said at the virtual GeM-CII National Public Procurement Conclave.
The commerce and industry ministry launched GeM on August 9, 2016, in place of the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposal with the objective of creating an open and transparent procurement platform of commonly used goods and services for government departments, ministries and agencies.
He added that after goods and services, GeM will add work contracts also on the portal.
“Railways buys 98% of its goods and services in India which are made in India,” he said.
GeM has processed almost 42.6 lakh orders worth Rs 57,516 crore in Gross Merchandise Value for about 46,000 government buyers. The portal showcases about 20.72 lakh products in 7,238 product categories and 130 services from 4.25 lakh registered sellers and service providers.
A World Bank report has already indicated an average savings of 9.75% over more than 1.63 lakh cases of procurement analysed on GeM during February 2019 to January 2020 with maximum savings in the top five categories ranging from 23.48% in procurement of ambulances to 60.52% in the procurement of light trucks.
“The government’s procurement is around $100-150 billion and it would be more, if we combine PSUs, local bodies and Panchayats,” Goyal said.
For seamless creation of bids on GeM by the railways ministry, integration of railways e-procurement system with GeM is underway.
“This will allow the digitized processes in Railways to be leveraged for seamless creation of bids in GeM as per the norms of the Marketplace in GeM,” said GeM CEO Talleen Kumar.
This is part of GeM 4.0 – which will be anchored in the Unified Procurement System wherein yeh functionality of other publishing portals such as the Central Public Procurement portal, the Indian Railway Electronic Procurement System and the Defence Public Procurement portal will be brought onto GeM in a phased manner to provide a uniform experience to all buyers. The integration of GeM with CPPP went live on July 1, 2020. Integration with other portals will be taken up in phases.
The minister also said that GeM can play a role in publicising all those products which are not made in India but are required the country and that the government’s decision to ask the buyers to give interest for delayed payments in GeM is a significant step.
At the same time, he also cautioned the unscrupulous sellers from pushing the poor quality goods or charging exorbitant prices, as they will not only be blacklisted from the GeM portal but from the entire government ecosystem.
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