Ease of doing business for MSMEs: Hailing the public procurement marketplace for MSMEs Government eMarketplace (GeM), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the platform has not just helped small businesses find a big customer (government departments, central public sector enterprises, etc) but it has also reduced the scope for corruption, accelerated projects and boosted transparency (in the public procurement process).
“Have you heard of a government running a successful e-commerce platform? It has happened in India. GeM is a platform where small traders and businesses fulfil the government’s needs…The technology has helped with online tendering also,” PM Modi said in his virtual address at the Bengaluru Tech Summit.
GeM had recently crossed Rs 3 lakh crore in procurement and 12 million in order volume amid the government’s growing focus on procuring from MSMEs via GeM. Launched in August 2016, GeM has processed 12.15 million orders so far worth Rs 3.29 lakh crore from 63,887 buyers on the platform, data on the GeM portal showed at the time of filing this report.
The Prime Minister in his speech also highlighted the support offered to street vendors during the Covid pandemic to restart their business. “During Covid-19, everyone was worried about small businesses. We helped them but we went one step further. We help street vendors access working capital to restart businesses. Those who start using digital payments are given incentives.”
The government had launched the PM SVANidhi credit scheme in June 2020 to offer street vendors collateral-free working capital loans initially up to Rs 10,000 for one-year tenure. At the time of filing this report, 36.94 lakh applications involving Rs 4,225 crore were disbursed out of sanctioned 41.93 lakh applications involving Rs 5,033 crore, showed data from the SVANidhi portal.
Among the top lenders under the scheme were SBI with 11 lakh applications disbursed followed by 4 lakh disbursements by Union Bank of India
According to the government’s Street Vendor Survey in 3,257 cities and towns, India has more than 49.48 lakh identified street vendors and more than 26.83 lakh street vendors with ID cards, as per the data shared by the Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishore in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha in August this year.
Also read: Can’t blame e-commerce for slow growth of retail MSMEs as claimed by traders: IIFT report