Government e-Marketplace (GeM)
Ministry of Commerce & Industry
About Government e-Marketplace (GeM):
- The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is a one-stop National Public Procurement Portal to facilitate online procurement of common use Goods & Services required by various Government Departments / Organizations / PSUs.
- It was launched in 2016 to bring transparency and efficiency in the government buying process.
- GEM aims to enhance transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement.
- It is a completely paperless, cashless and system driven e-marketplace that enables procurement of common use goods and services with minimal human interface.
- It provides the tools of e-bidding, reverses e-auction and demand aggregation to facilitate the government users to achieve the best value for their money.
- The purchases through GeM by Government users have been authorized and made mandatory by the Ministry of Finance by adding a new Rule No. 149 in the General Financial Rules, 2017.
- It has been developed by Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (Ministry of Commerce and Industry) with technical support of National e-governance Division (MEITy).
Background:
Government e-Marketplace owes its genesis to the recommendations of two Groups of Secretaries made to the Prime Minister in January 2016. They recommended setting up of a dedicated e-market for different goods & services procured or sold by Government/PSUs besides reforming DGS&D. Subsequently, the Finance Minister in his Budget speech for FY 2016-17, announced setting up of a technology driven platform to facilitate procurement of goods and services by various Ministries and agencies of the Government.
DGS&D with technical support of National eGovernance Division (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) has developed GeM portal for procurement of both Products & Services. The portal was launched on 9th August 2016 by the Commerce & Industry Minister. Procurement on GeM has been authorized by General Financial Rules by making necessary changes in government rules. Presently more than 7400 products in about 150 product categories and hiring of transport service are available on GeM POC portal. Transactions for more than Rs 140 Crore have already been processed through GeM.
GeM is a completely paperless, cashless and system driven e-market place that enables procurement of common use goods and services with minimal human interface.
FEATURES
- GeM eliminates human interface in vendor registration, order placement and payment processing, to a great extent.
- Being an open platform, GeM offers no entry barriers to bonafide suppliers who wish to do business with the Government.
- At every step, SMS and e-Mail notifications are sent to both buyer, his/her head of organization, paying authorities as well as sellers.
- Online, cashless and time bound payment on GeM is facilitated through integration with PFMS and State Bank Multi Option System (SBMOPS); web-services integration is being extended to payment systems of Railways, Defence, major PSUs and State Governments.
- Seamless processes and online time-bound payment, which is also mandated by the Department of Expenditure, has given confidence to the vendors and reduced their ‘administrative’ cost involved in pursuing officers for timely payment.
GeM Facilities
- Listing of products for individual, prescribed categories of Goods/ Services of common use
- Look, estimate, compare and buying facility on dynamic pricing basis.
- Market place buying of majority of common User Items.
- Buying Goods and Services online, as and when required.
- Single window system for aggregating demands and ordering
- Transparency and ease of buying
- Useful for low value buying and also for bulk buying at competitive price using Reverse Auction/ e-bidding.
- Continuous vendor rating system.
- User friendly dash board for buying and monitoring supplies and payments
- Return policy
GEM ADVANTAGES
| For Buyers Rich listing of products for individual categories of Goods/ServicesSearch, Compare, Select and Buy facility Buying Goods and Services online, as and when required.Transparent and ease of buying Continuous vendor rating systemUser-friendly dash board for Buying and monitoring supplies and paymentsEasy Return policy | For Sellers Direct access to all Government departments. One stop shop for marketing with minimal efforts. One stop shop for bids / reverse auction on products / services New Product Suggestion facility available to Sellers Dynamic pricing: Price can be changed based on market conditions Seller friendly dashboard for selling and monitoring of supplies and payments Consistent and uniform purchase procedures |
GeM 4.0
GeM 4.0 is the latest version of the e-marketplace. It adds on to the features that were already in place in the third edition of GeM. Some of the new features include the following:
- Sellers will get timely payment.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) based advanced search engine.
- Demand aggregation wherein buyers can collate several orders of the same product for different consignees across many organisations within one ministry.
- The user interface has been revamped and made more user-friendly.
- Staggered or flexible delivery is allowed.
- The bidding module has been redesigned and now consignee-wise and item-wise bidding is permitted.
- Advanced analytics, machine learning, deep learning and AI are integrated into the portal.
- The grievance redressal mechanism has been improved.
- Cataloguing has been made simpler for sellers by introducing price variance.
- Ease of Payment options with integration with many banks and ERPs.
- Seller rating is now introduced making it easier for buyers to make their decisions, and also incentivising sellers to upgrade.
- Many new services and categories have been included.
- Now, sellers and buyers can interact with each other thus offering scope for improvement and a better understanding of the market.
- This version has dedicated pages for CPSUs (central PSUs).
GeM 3.0
The third version of the marketplace, GeM 3.0 has been envisaged as the National Procurement Portal of India by the Government. In August 2016, the earlier version of GeM 3.0, GeM 2.0 was launched as a pilot project.
- GeM 3.0 offers advanced Management Information System (MIS), user rating, e-Performance Bank Guarantee (e-PBG), e-Earnest Money Deposit (e-EMD), demand aggregation, template-based bidding and RA creation, powerful search engine and standardized and enriched catalogue management, analytics and more.
- It has a powerful search engine and price comparison tool using third party sites which are real-time and multisource.
- Online vendor assessment and Performance-based User Rating are also available. It has market based-bundling and bunching of products and services.
- It offers more services, RA Facility & with a bid, and at the same time has Multi-Cart Functionality.
Source: GeM
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