Government e-Marketplace (GeM), a national procurement portal, is eyeing annual procurement worth ₹2 lakh crore during FY23, following a buoyancy in its adoption, said Prasanth Kumar Singh, CEO.
“In the first four months of the current fiscal, we did a gross merchandise value (GMV) of ₹60,000 crore and hence, ₹2 lakh crore is achievable,” he said in an interview.
While terming the growth of public procurement as phenomenal, he said since inception, it took almost four-and-a-half years to reach the first ₹1 lakh crore (March 2021), while in the last fiscal, the GMV was ₹1.70 lakh crore. The cumulative GMV till date is ₹2.86 lakh crore.
According to him, it was due to the huge participation by buyers of Central/State governments, Central/State PSUs and MSEs. It was in the ratio of 30%, 30% and 40% respectively.
Incidentally, it is mandatory for Central government and PSUs to make procurement through GeM.
However, Mr. Singh said that the participation of southern States in GeM was lower, as they had their own portal and felt opening their doors [to GeM] would be detrimental to the sellers in the state.
“Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are progressive States and have their own portals. The portals are dated. They do not have marketplace like GeM. It does not have visibility and the sellers don’t get better pricing for the products,” he said.
GeM officials have initiated talks with 11 State government officials to allay their fears and also motivate and educate MSEs through seminars and programmes.
Besides, help desk has been created in regional languages to aid MSEs. Work is on to provide terms and conditions and FAQs in major regional languages.
“We are here to grow the vendor base on GeM and help the MSEs improve their market access and to get a greater share in the public procurement thereby boosting the economy of the State,” he said. Quoting statistics, Mr. Singh said Uttar Pradesh topped the list in procurement with ₹11,000 crore, followed by Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. The cumulative procurement by Tamil Nadu since inception was ₹1,090 crore. Though there are several comparable portals across the globe, GeM, within a short time, has reached fourth spot with a GMV of $28 billion. The top three portals are from Korea, the U.S. and Singapore.
“Our goal is to reach $30 billion. States like U.P. can do procurement of more than ₹50,000 crore and with the active participation of other states, we can do it easily,” he said.
