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In a Cabinet briefing, it was said by Anurag Thakur,<br>who is the Information and Broadcasting Minister, that this initiative taken by the Government would bring<br>transparency to cooperatives and also would help them benefit from GeM and on top of that give the GeM<br>sellers access to a bigger base of buyers. Although one should also take note of that, GeM is as of now,<br>not available for private sector buyers but sellers could be from across all segments, including both<br>government and private.
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GeM: Now MSMES Can Sell To Cooperatives As Well On Govt’s E-Commerce Portal GeM, or as we say, Government E-Marketplace, which is hosted by DGS&D, is a dynamic, self-sustaining, and user-friendly portal, where common user goods and services can be procured. The most important part is that it is completely paperless, cashless, and a system-driven marketplace which not only helps in minimizing human interactions but makes the work easier just in a few clicks. The idea and implementation of GeM have been a very bold step of the Government with the aim to change the way in which the procedures of procurement of goods and services are done by the different Governmental Ministries, Departments, Organizations, PSUs, etc. Our Prime Minister along with his Union Cabinet, approved the inclusion of cooperatives as buyers on the Government e-Marketplace for public procurement. In a Cabinet briefing, it was said by Anurag Thakur, who is the Information and Broadcasting Minister, that this initiative taken by the Government would bring transparency to cooperatives and also would help them benefit from GeM and on top of that give the GeM sellers access to a bigger base of buyers. Although one should also take note of that, GeM is as of now, not available for private sector buyers but sellers could be from across all segments, including both government and private. The Cabinet also provided the information that the validated list of cooperatives to be consigned in GeM for a pilot as well as subsequent scale-up will be decided by the Ministry of Cooperation, after consulting GeM Special-purpose Vehicle. This step will make sure that the logistics requirement and technical capacity of the GeM are well-maintained and taken into consideration while deciding the pace of onboarding Cooperatives as buyers. Additional technical infrastructure will be offered by the marketplace to support additional users on the existing portal along with providing guidance and assistance to the cooperatives for onboarding and transaction hornets, via contact centers, in-field training, and other support services. Nonetheless, the Ministry of Cooperation will be deciding the overall pace of roll-out while the aims and target dates will be aligned mutually between the Ministry of Cooperation and GeM. It can be seen that there are approximately 8.54 lakh registered cooperatives with 27 crore members in the country that would, after this reform, be eligible to onboard the GeM platform. With new reforms comes improved and possible changes, for which the portal is expected to need ‘some investments in the additional technology infrastructure, and resources for additional training and support’. The Cabinet said that to cover these incremental costs, GeM is likely to charge an applicable transaction fee from cooperatives, which will also be mutually decided by the Ministry of Cooperation. Some numbers that were provided by Anurag Thakur were that in the past four years, Rs. 6220 crore procurement had been made in FY18, and this eventually over the course of time grew to Rs.1,06,000 crore in FY22. In the same manner, the cumulative buyer count too jumped from 21,254 to 59,130 and on the other hand, the buyer count jumped from 86,835 to more than 40,02,000 during the FY18-FY22 period.
