Credit and Finance for MSMEs: Among the 54 ministries listed on the public procurement monitoring portal MSME Sambandh, ministries for petroleum, power, heavy industries, defence, and coal sectors have procured maximum goods and services in terms of order value from micro and small enterprises (MSE) in FY21 so far, the government data showed. In 2018, the government had revised the annual public procurement target for the central ministries, departments from MSEs from 20 per cent to 25 per cent of their total annual purchases. The procurement from MSEs in FY21 so far stood at Rs 5,475.28 crore – 32.90 per cent of the total procurement of Rs 16,642.39 crore and benefitted 15,594 MSEs, according to the data on MSME Sambadh portal.
Amid Covid, while Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has bought goods and services from MSEs worth Rs 2,126.23 crore so far in FY21, Power Ministry has procured goods worth Rs 989.68 crore. Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Ministry of Defence and Ministry Coal were other top buyers of MSE goods and services worth Rs 759.16 crore, Rs 471.83 crore, and Rs 337.07 crore respectively. The FY21 annual targets for the five ministries based on the previous 20 per cent threshold as published by the procurement portal were Rs 8397.60 crore (Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas), Rs 1,090.33 crore (Ministry of Power), Rs 2,548.67 crore (Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises), Rs 1,505.40 crore (Ministry of Defence), and Rs 338.93 crore (Ministry of Coal).
Also read: PM SVANidhi: Street vendors want over 2X credit limit increase; 1 lakh applications sanctioned so far
To enhance efficiency and transparency in the public procurement process, the government in August 2016 had launched online portal government e-marketplace (GeM) for government buyers including ministries, central department and PSUs to procure goods from MSEs and other sellers via e-commerce route. The portal has so far processed 43.48 lakh orders with a transaction value of Rs 58,759 crore in which MSEs have a majority share of 57.87 per cent. The e-commerce marketplace has over 4.42 lakh sellers out of which more than 1.16 lakh are MSEs. The portal is soon likely to be revamped with new features. It had recently launched a ‘staggered delivery’ feature for buyers to schedule the delivery of products for up to one year at the time of bid creation.