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Government e-Marketplace (GeM) Chief Executive Officer Prashant Kumar Singh on Monday said the public procurement platform would revamp its instant-credit disbursal initiative to make it available for all businesses.
Till now, the initiative is limited to sole proprietors.
The GeM SAHAY initiative will enable all sellers to get collateral-free loans at the point of acceptance of an order at competitive interest rates. This will help them with the working capital required to complete the order.
“From lenders’ side, only non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) had come on board. Later, ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank came on board. Then we thought that there’s no point limiting it to only proprietors. We'll expand to all sellers. We have floated a fresh request for proposal (RFP) and the work is under progress,” Singh told reporters in a briefing.
“The launch should happen before the financial year ends,” he said.
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GeM was integrated with SAHAY to launch the GeM-SAHAY app over two years ago, to address the credit availability challenges faced by sole proprietors on GeM. It provides an end-to-end digital solution that grants collateral-free loans instantly and without requiring the consent of any buyers.
Singh said goods and services worth more than Rs 1.1 trillion were procured from the GeM portal during the first five months of the financial year, as compared to Rs 61,181 crore during the same time period a year ago, as buying from various central government departments, public sector entities, as well as states and Union Territories, have increased.
GeM was launched in 2016 as an end-to-end e-marketplace to facilitate transparent, efficient, e-procurement of commonly used goods and services required by the Centre, states, and public sector undertakings. It is a government-to-business platform.
