By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, SEPT 06, 2018: THE Union Minister of Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, yesterday launched the National Mission on Government eMarketplace  (GeM) for increasing awareness and accelerating the use of (GeM). Speaking on this occasion the Minister said that in the next three years transactions on GeM will reach USD 100 billion. He further stated that during this mission efforts will be made to bring more self-help groups, artisans and start-ups on this platform. The Central andState Governments along with Banks and PSUs willundertakethe national drive from6 th September to 17 th October 2018 by organising workshops, roadshow,trainings, events and other information, education and communication activities, including buyer and seller registration.

The National Mission will cover all central government departments, states and public sector undertakings in a mission mode. It is aimed at creating awareness about GeM, train the buyers and sellers, get them registered in GeM and increase the procurement through GeM. Thisaim of this mission is to promote inclusiveness by empowering various categories of sellers and service providers such as MSMEs, start-ups, domestic manufacturers, women entrepreneurs, and Self-Help Groups. It will also Highlight and communicate the value addition via transparency and efficiency in public procurement, including corruption-free governance in sync with the Central Government's objective of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance'. The mission also aims to give a boost to cashless, contactless, paperless transactions in line with Digital India objectives. It will improve overall efficiency and driving significant savings in Government procurement spends and it will maximize easy availability of all types of products and services procured by Government buyers via registration drives for existing vendors, further expanding the base of online products and services.Widespread training initiatives will be undertaken across the country, ensuring on-boarded buyers and sellers are aware of all GeM features.

Government eMarketplace is the national public procurement portal offering an online, end-to-end, solution for procurement of common use goods and services by government departments. GeMprovides an open, inclusive, transparent and efficient online marketplace, which provides huge savings to government.It is mandatory for central government departments to procure through GeM.  25 states and Union Territories have signed MoU with GeM to adopt it as the mandatory mode of procurement for their departments so far. 

GeM deploys technology to completely automate procurement processes and systems, introducing greater accountability in public procurement across India.  In two years of its operations, GeM has recorded more than 7.25 lakh transactions worth over Rs.11,250 crores and established itself as an open, transparent, efficient and inclusive platform providing huge savings to the government. The portal has nearly 27 thousand buyer organisations registered and about 1.37 lakh sellers and service providers offering more than 4.65 lakh products and services for online purchase and contributes to approximately 20-25% average overall savings to the Government.