GeM in 2020: Govt’s purchase of goods from MSMEs crossed Rs 74.5k cr in value, says Commerce Ministry

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The total transaction value on the government’s public procurement portal Government eMarketplace (GeM) has crossed Rs 74,552 crore as of December 30, 2020, Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday sharing major highlights of the Department of Commerce in 2020. The marketplace has 17.6 lakh listed products, 9 lakh sellers and service providers, and 11,543 product categories “promoting transparent public procurement while giving a fair opportunity and level playing field to vendors,” it said in a statement. The Modi government had launched the GeM marketplace on August 9, 2016, to enhance speed and transparency in the government buying process to benefit small businesses.

Financial Express Online had earlier in December 2020 reported that GeM saw the average daily order value increasing 282 per cent from Rs 34.12 crore in April 2020 to Rs 130.53 crore in October 2020, as per the data tweeted by GeM on December 4. “GeM was started with an objective to transform the legacy procurement system in the country. A rapid growth in Avg Order Value per day in the current FY 2020-21 is showing the higher acceptability of the platform for procurement purpose,” GeM had tweeted. The marketplace was able to add 40,212 new sellers on an average per month and 486 new product categories per month in 2020, according to data shared by the portal. In fact, it added over 1 lakh sellers in November itself, registered under Udham Aadhaar under the Ministry of MSME.

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However, the order value of Covid-related products had declined significantly in November after peaking in October since March 2020. The government’s purchase of such goods including medical and auxillary products through GeM stood at Rs 389.4 crore in November down 61 per cent from Rs 996.9 crore in October, based on the analyses of the data sourced from GeM. The government had enabled the procurement of medical and auxillary goods via GeM to cater to the immediate need of ventilators, Covid kits, and masks amid the initial shortage of such products and spiraling Covid cases post-February.

The article was first published in Financial Express