Ministries of defence, railways among largest buyers from GeM platform

Ministries of defence and railways and central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) are among the largest buyer organisations on the public procurement portal, GeM, a senior official said.

Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal was launched in August 2016 for online purchases of goods and services by all central government ministries, states and departments.

GeM CEO Talleen Kumar said that they are introducing a range of software functionalities to address the unique and diverse procurement needs of these large buyers.

"These steps will enable these organizations to conduct their procurement with transparency, ease and efficiency to the fullest possible extent on the GeM platform. The volume of procurement conducted by the ministries of railways and defence and CPSEs has seen a steady upward trend since it was rolled out in 2016," he told PTI.

The cumulative procurement by CPSEs as of January 15, 2021, stood at Rs 4,737 crore.

"The cumulative order value of procurement by the defence ministry is Rs 8,232.6 crore (as of January 15, 2021) and is the highest among all ministries and state governments," he added.

Kumar said that the continuous engagement with the defence ministry and the development of new functionalities on the platform has yielded good results in this financial year.

Similarly, the cumulative order value of procurement on GeM by the Ministry of Railways as of January15 stood at Rs 2,165.9 crore.

GeM is focussed on integrating with the procurement process of the Ministry of Railways to bring its procurement on the portal up to the full potential," he said.

The integration of GeM with Integrated Material Management System (iMMS)/ Indian Railway Electronic Procurement System (IRePS) is underway and it is expected that Railways will be able to create bids on GeM around the middle of February, Kumar added.

The cumulative transaction value on GeM as of January 26 was Rs 80,564 crore, up from 33,008crore on August 1, 2019.

Besides defence and railways, ministries of home, petroleum, finance, health, electronics and power are major buyers from the platform.

Among states, Uttar Pradesh was at the top in 2019-20. It was followed by Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka.

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, web casting and analytics, are listed on the portal.

So far, 1,058,235 sellers and service providers are registered with the portal to sell 2,316,377 products and several services.