Govt's online marketplace for public procurement to be rolled out from Jan?

The new and dynamic version of the Government e-Market (GeM) portal for public procurement is likely to be rolled out from January, a senior commerce ministry official said.

"Work is underway, we are hoping to roll out the new dynamic platform from January," the official added.

The current avatar came into being in August last year for online purchases of goods and services by all central government ministries and departments.

The online marketplace so far has been working on a pilot.

In the scaled-up version, the portal will have all the best international features such as catalogue management, product categorisation, contract management, data analytics, refund and rejection policy.

The new portal would give more choices to both buyers and sellers alike.

The makeover of the GeM portal assumes significance as public procurement of the central and state governments is to the tune of Rs 5 lakh crore annually.

So far 42,022 sellers are registered with the portal to sell 2,59,745 products.

Services, including those of tax, security and digitisation and scanning, are also available on the website.