Loans for GeM sellers: The public procurement platform of the government, Government eMarketplace (GeM) will soon launch its mobile-based lending platform GeM Sahay 2.0 for collateral-free loans up to Rs 10 lakh to GeM sellers, its CEO Prashant Kumar Singh said in a media briefing, according to a news report by public radio broadcaster AIR. The loans will be approved in 10 minutes while more banks will be encouraged to join the platform, the report said citing the commerce ministry.
The platform “aims at enabling sellers to avail loan on acceptance of an order on GEM platform. In a bid to achieve financial inclusion, GEM endeavours to provide collateral-free loan upto 10 Lakhs which will be approved within 10 minutes. It will also work to bring down the interest rate below 10% with the participation of more banks,” AIR posted on X (formerly Twitter).
The marketplace has disbursed around Rs 21 crore loan to sellers so far, the report said quoting the ministry. It added that according to the ministry, 2 lakh 13 thousand businesses are actively offering 36 lakh products on the GeM platform.
The existing GeM Sahay provides credit facilities to businesses on the basis of their orders on the platform. According to the GeM Sahay platform, a business can avail of a loan of a minimum of 80 per cent of the purchase order value.
GeM has various banking partners such as UGRO Capital, ICICI Bank, Tata Capital, 121 Finance, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Oxyzo Finance, Kredable, Lending Kart, Union Bank and ABFL to enable lending.
So far, there are more than 81,168 primary buyers registered on the platform, along with 1.90 lakh secondary buyers. There are 11,888 product categories on the platform and 310 service categories. In the current financial year, the order volume has crossed 25 lakh so far, valued at Rs 1.47 lakh crore with a 50.45 per cent share of micro and small enterprise (MSE) sellers.
Also read: Defence ministry among top buyers on GeM; procures Rs 13k crore goods till July in FY24
Importantly, the public procurement marketplace had crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in gross merchandise value (GMV) within 145 days of the current financial year 2023-24 in comparison to 243 days taken in the previous financial year to achieve the Rs 1 lakh crore GMV milestone.
Moreover, the average GMV per day also grew from Rs 412 crore per day in FY23 to Rs 690 crore per day in FY24, indicating an increase in procurement by government departments and public enterprises from MSMEs via GeM.