AIR Spotlight - Interview with Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, Government E- Marketplace

AIR Spotlight is an insightful programme featured daily on the All India Radio Newsonair. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation. In this article, the topic of discussion is the Government e-Marketplace (GeM).

Participants:

• Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, Government E- Marketplace
• Arjun J Choudhary , AIR Correspondent

Context:

The interview analysed the reforms in public procurement focusing on the various aspects of Government e-Marketplace and the facilities that are enabled with an intel-based procurement platform.

Government E- Marketplace

• The Government e-Marketplace is a dedicated online platform where goods and services can be procured by various organizations and departments under the Government of India, and by the PSUs.
• GeM is aimed at enhancing the efficiency, speed and transparency in public procurement of goods and services. It also serves the objective of eliminating corruption.
• It is administered by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry under the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals.
• It is a completely paperless, cashless and system-driven e-marketplace that enables the procurement of common use goods and services with a minimal human interface.
• It is an online marketplace for government officers and others for procurement.

Know more about Government e-Marketplace in the linked article. 

Reforms  In Public Procurement

• GeM is a technology  driven platform and is an advanced step in facilitating the Public Procurement Processes.
• Buyers benefit from the diverse range of services offered at competitive prices; sellers benefit from an easy channel and the government benefits from creating a high efficiency public procurement system.
• The GeM-SAHAY portal provides frictionless financing for MSMEs on the Government eMarketplace where they can get a loan at the point of acceptance of an order on the GeM platform.
  • GeM-SAHAY
    • The country’s leading lenders are associated with the SAHAY platform.
    • With the portal, loan disbursement will be instantaneous, instead of the conventional in-principle approval of loans that may very often not culminate in an actual disbursal.
    • Sellers applying for the loan facility will have a seamless end to end digital experience with a mobile application.
• To ensure the quality across the platform, sellers are given ratings and buyers can filter the sellers on the basis of these ratings.
• Quality-certification for GeM is done by the Quality Council of India.
• The Quality Council of India  was set up to establish and operate national accreditation structures and promote quality through the National Quality Campaign.
  • Quality Council of India
    • It was established jointly by the Government of India and the Indian Industry represented by the three premier industry associations i.e. Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, Confederation of Indian Industry and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
• The bidding process enabled on the platform has no human intervention and has different patterns for different bidding scales.
• Bidding over 5 lakhs is enabled with a Reverse Auction Facility.
  • The Reverse Auction System allows the auction to arrive at a price that is relatively unimaginable in a normal bidding setup.

Overview

• The portal follows all the government rules that flow from GFR (General Financial Rules) to DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) in order to get people on board and further achieve the advantages of economies of scale.
• The onboarding is kept very simple and is integrated with Government Data like Aadhar and PAN for verification purposes.
• Over the past few years, the portal has been successfully aiding public procurements with a participation of around 20 Lakhs MSMEs and 10,000 Startups.

Read more Gist of AIR Spotlight here.

AIR Spotlight – Interview with Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, Government E- Marketplace:- Download PDF Here