E-marketplace launched for official Government procurement of goods and services

Aiming to ensure greater transparency and revolutionise government procurement, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday launched the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), an official statement said here. The Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D) has developed the GeM, a completely end to end procurement system for purchase of goods and services of common use by the government buyers. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech 2016-17, announced the establishment of a technology driven platform by DGS&D. The pilot phase of the GeM has been developed jointly for selective goods and services. The entire process flow designing has been done in house in order to bring greater transparency, speed and efficiency in public procurement, the statement said. “It is completely an end to end online procurement system including payment to suppliers. GeM relieves public offices from tedious and time consuming tendering process and thus cuts down on administrative and transaction costs,” it added. It will help in online registration of suppliers and government buyers using self certification and authentication through Aadhar, PAN, MCA21 and Biometric Attendance System. It will also facilitate seamless process flow and standardised specifications with complete audit trail. “All transactions in GeM are completely secure. At every stage of processing, there are alerts through emails and SMS which make the system very responsive,” the statement said. A call centre for GeM has also been set up to help both buyers and sellers in conducting their transactions on GeM, it added. IANS