‘India’s Govt e Marketplace to become world’s largest public procurement platform this fiscal’ – Times of India

NEW DELHI: India’s Government e Marketplace (GeM) is all set to become the world’s biggest public procurement platform this fiscal. Korea ON-line E-Procurement System (KONEPS) was the biggest platform with a turnover of $85 billion last fiscal, of which almost 75% came from works contract. “GeM’s turnover of goods and services alone (the Indian platform does not currently provide for works contracts) was $50 billion.In current FY 2024-25, we will overtake KONEPS to become the world’s biggest public procurement platform,” said P K Singh, GeM CEO.
The platform currently has over 3.7 lakh buyers and over 21 lakh sellers for nearly 12,000 product and over 320 service categories. While computers and phones are the biggest items to be transacted through it, in value terms service contracts top the charts. It closed last financial year with Rs 4 lakh crore in gross merchandise value (GMV), double of FY 23, with procurement of services surging by 205%. The Union commerce ministry’s GeM has enabled small domestic entrepreneurs to participate in government tenders from anywhere at any time, breaking the “cartel” of established service providers.
“We are using artificial intelligence in a big way and have become the first Govt agency to have a generative AI-based chatbox to resolve any query. In a bid to improve the ease of doing business, we have slashed transaction charges. Now orders between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 crore will see a transaction charge of 0.3% of order value. And orders above Rs 10 crore will see a flat fee of Rs 3 lakh,” Singh said. While vendor assessment process has been rationalised with reduction in chargeable fees from sellers by up to 69% for manufacturers & 92% for traders, caution money deposit has been reduced from Rs 5,000 to Rs 2,000 (60% drop) for new sellers with turnover up to Rs 1 crore
GeM Thursday launched its Aadhar collection platform which is “vocal for local.” It is planning to start a training platform for sahayaks (helpers) who will help resolve small sellers’ queries and guide them through the marketplace. “We saw there is a need for this kind of service. The properly trained sahayaks will not be our employees but they will provide the required help to anyone who needs the same. We will be floating the request for proposal (RFP) for this proposed scheme this month,” Singh said. The sahayaks will get a fee for those taking their help.