Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday asked India’s public procurement platform to bring on board more state government agencies, municipal corporations and panchayats for greater volumes and price competitiveness.
Addressing an event to mark the decade of Government e-Marketplace (GeM), the minister also asked to reach out down to the district level and lower to register more and more sellers for the next phase of growth of the platform.
The annual procurement of goods and services on the platform has exceeded Rs 5 lakh crore in the last two years, starting from a modest Rs 422 crore of orders facilitated in 2016-17.
“While the platform took more than eight years to achieve its first Rs 10 lakh crore in cumulative Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), the next Rs 10 lakh crore milestone was reached in less than two years, reflecting accelerated adoption and increasing participation across the public procurement ecosystem,” Goyal added.
He said that the revamp of the platform being undertaken by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will add more functionalities and create systems that will drive the next decade of growth. TCS will be deploying AI on the system.
“GeM 2.0 will be rolled out in next few months,” Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said. The number of profile-completed sellers has increased from 3,339 to 25.45 lakh, while primary buyer organisations have grown from 1,707 to 1.37 lakh. The number of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) registered on the platform has increased from 2,424 to 12.25 lakh, the minister said.
An IIT Delhi study covering FY 2023–24 to FY 2025–26 estimated a monetised benefit of Rs 865.72 lakh crore through price and process efficiencies, resulting in a net social saving of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The study also found that, in a comparison of 101 items with other e-marketplaces, GeM offered lower prices for 74.3% of the items, with a spend-weighted saving of 13.6%.