Commerce Min to encourage states to use GeM for procurement

The commerce and industry ministry would encourage states to ink MoUs with government's e-marketplace (GeM) for procurement of goods and services.
"We shall now be going forward to encourage states to have an MoU with the GeM so that their procurement can also go through the transparent process," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters here.
She said that the ministry would discuss this with all the states.
The move would help in increasing transparency in procurement of goods and services by states and also result in savings for the exchequer.
The Commerce Ministry last year launched the government e-marketplace (GeM) for online purchase of goods and services by various central government ministries and departments.

The move is aimed at bringing in more transparency and streamlining the government procurement, estimated at Rs 10,000 crore a year.
Over 9,000 products from 250 categories including computers, stationery and several services are registered by different vendors on the portal.
The Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D) is working on increasing the number of services by including areas like cleaning, plumbing and digitisation of records.