Cabinet meet to include works contract under Govt e-Marketplace soon

Sahay initiative will enable small businesses on the portal get loans instantly against orders

The government is working on a proposal of allowing works contract on the public procurement portal — Government e-Marketplace (GeM). And, a Cabinet approval for this is likely soon.

This initiative, when rolled out, will reduce time, standardise processes and enable seamless execution of contracts, said GeM chief executive officer (CEO) Prashant Kumar.

Works contract includes service as well as transfer of goods, such as construction of buildings and roads, as well as setting up of plants, among others.

“Works contract is a huge area. Different government departments follow different norms and conditions in the tender. We want to standardise the whole process and bring it on the GeM platform. There will be standard bidding documents and a feature called request for proposal (RFP) builder. As a result, something that takes a public sector undertaking (PSU) to do in four-five months will be done immediately,” Singh told Business Standard.

“It will reduce time, maintain uniformity, there will be complete transparency in audit trail and litigation will be reduced,” he said.

GeM is in the process of finalising a proposal and sending it to the commerce and industry ministry that will thereafter seek the Union Cabinet’s approval. Currently, all central government ministries and departments can buy only goods and services on the GeM portal.

In her Budget speech in February 2020, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had mentioned that GeM is heading towards being the unified procurement system for the entire country, covering goods, services and works.

“It offers a great opportunity for medium, small and micro enterprises (MS­MEs). Arou­nd 324,000 vendors are already on this platform,” Sitharaman had said.

The government had launched the GeM in 2016 as an end-to-end e-marketplace to facilitate transparent and efficient e-procurement of commonly used goods and services required by the Centre, states and PSUs. It is a government-to-business platform. Singh also said that the GeM Sahay initiative has been launched to enable small businesses on the GeM portal receive uncollateralised working capital loans instantly against their orders.

Towards this, the GeM has tied up with banks and non- banking financial companies (NBFCs). The facility went live on June 7 and is expected to benefit 700,000 MSMEs registered on the platform. According to official data, GeM’s order value reached Rs 38,620 crore in FY21. There are over 52,000 buyers and over 1.87 million sellers registered on the portal, dealing in 16,332 product catalogs and 187 service catalogs.