Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday urged the industry to act as whistleblower to report instances of wrong declaration in terms of indigenization of products listed on the e-commerce portal Government eMarketplace (GeM). Addressing a conclave on Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 on Tuesday, the minister said this would help improve the transparency in procurement process and encourage domestically made goods and services.
“We are undertaking this exercise in full public glare because under PM’s vision we have to strive for full transparency in our working,” said Goyal.
The Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 aims to promote local industries by giving them preference in the procurement of goods and services and works by central ministries or departments, their subordinate offices, autonomous bodies controlled by the government, government companies, their joint ventures and special purpose vehicles.
The minister also noted that the government is willing to adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the procurement process on GeM portal to make it more impactful. He also asked the industry to share any issues if they are facing related to harrasment to be openly addressed.
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The procurement portal GeM recently crossed the 50-lakh seller base, around five months after it achieved the 40 lakh-seller mark. Out of total sellers, 8 lakh were micro and small enterprises with a 55.01 per cent share in the portal’s total order value.
To make marketplace more competitive, GeM CEO Prashant Kumar Singh had told FE Aspire earlier this year that the platform will delist sellers that are not active on the platform. “This would clear the clutter and make active sellers more visible on the platform with more opportunities to sell to the government,” said Singh.
The government is planning to make 100 per cent of its procurement through GeM by the end of the current financial year. While the existing share of the government’s procurement from GeM could not be ascertained but Commerce Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam in August last year said at the CII’s National Public Procurement Conclave that that the portal tapped only 5 per cent of the total government purchases of around Rs 20 lakh crore a year.