New Delhi

Annual procurement through Government e Marketplace (GeM) - a one-stop portal to facilitate online procurement of common use goods & services required by various Government bodies - has reached Rs 1 lakh crore FY 2021-22 - representing a 160% growth compared to last FY. 

Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, GeM said, "Since inception, the cumulative Gross Merchandize Value (GMV) reached Rs 1 Lakh crore over 4 and half years. On March 23, 2022, the GMV of GeM in the current Financial Year surpassed Rs 1 lakh crore in less than a year. This represents a 160% growth compared to last FY." 

Referring to the share of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), Singh said that approximately Rs 43,000 crore worth procurement was done by CPSEs (about 43% of total GMV) on GeM, showing an approximate growth of 508% as compared to last FY. He also asserted that states continued to be an important stakeholder with approximately 30% contribution to total GMV.

GeM portal has transformed public procurement in India by driving its three pillars viz. inclusion, usability and transparency and efficiency and cost saving. The number of orders has also surpassed 31.5 lakh in the current financial year with a growth at the rate of 22%. In a short span of 5 years, GeM has become one of the biggest government e-procurement platforms in the world.

Highlighting the role played by GeM in ushering in inclusion in government procurement, Singh said that GeM has taken a host of steps to onboard products of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), tribal communities, craftsmen, weavers, and MSMEs. About 57% of the total business on GeM has come through the MSME units and over 6% has been contributed by female entrepreneurs. It may be noted that the number of women sellers and entrepreneurs on GeM has grown 6 times in a year. 

It may be noted that procurement from MSEs is at 57% of the total GMV currently with a growth of 143% compared to last FY. There is a 15% increase in buyer onboarding compared to last FY and there is a 187% increase in seller onboarding compared to last FY. There is also a 44% increase in the number of services compared to last FY with a 25% contribution in the total GMV (Rs 25,000 crore).

GeM is an online platform for public procurement in India which was envisaged by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The initiative was launched on August 9, 2016 by Ministry of Commerce and Industry, GoI, with an objective to create an open and transparent procurement platform for government buyers. Created in a record time of 5 months, GeM facilitates online procurement of common use Goods and Services.

According to an independent assessment made by the World Bank, average savings for buyers in Government e Marketplace portal is about 9.75% on the median price. Since inception GeM has shown impressive growth year on year with better prices, thus helping the state exchequer save substantial money. In an analysis in the Economic Survey 2021-22, cost comparison of various commodities on GeM with those of popular online platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart showed that GeM prices were 9.5% lower. Ten out of 22 commodities in the sample were cheaper on the GeM portal as compared to other platforms.

New features and initiatives launched in GeM Covid 19 Oxygen drive was carried out during the Covid crisis to onboard suppliers of compressed medical oxygen gas cylinders on GeM. Total 250 Covid-19 medical categories are available on GeM; over 4.73 Lakh orders were placed through the same since March 2020.

GeM SAHAY is an initiative to facilitate small sellers to avail credit financing from various integrated Lenders for the Orders received on GeM Portal. The Forward auction module has been launched facilitating government Auctioneers to auction assets using multiple auction modes and monitor the complete selling life cycle of their assets.

GeM platform supports advanced analytics framework to identify anomalous behaviour and transactions, market intelligence, demand/price forecasting and procurement planning/monitoring. GeM now has integration with 24 CPSEs ERP systems for post order information exchange. In total over 3 lakh orders worth Rs 42,000 Crore were exchanged via the integration.

GeM has Implemented Natural Language Processing based search to understand the users’ intent thereby allowing the display of relevant and more accurate search results when they search for products or services on GeM.

GeM has enabled the Buyback mechanism through which the buyer will be able to float a bid to replace old products with new ones and get some additional discount/buyback on the old products. GeM has enabled schedule wise evaluation for BoQ bids. The Buyers can now publish and evaluate item-wise, group-wise, consignee-wise for the BoQ Bids.

GeM was adjudged as the winner in the "Best Use of Digital Technology" category at the CIPS Excellence in Procurement Awards 2021 held at London. GeM emerged the winner in this category after competing with some of the biggest and best names in procurement across the public and private sector globally, including GEP, Jaguar Land Rover, Royal Dutch Shell, VenDigital and Shell.