New Delhi: Under the leadership of Union Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah, the Ministry of Cooperation is encouraging multi-state cooperative societies and the cooperative societies registered under State Cooperative Acts to join the GeM.
The Union Cabinet under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the registration of cooperative societies as ‘buyers’ on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform. This will enable the cooperative societies to access more than 45 lakh vendors on a single platform and to follow a transparent, economic and efficient procurement system.
At present, there are about 8.54 lakh cooperatives in India with about 29 crore membership. They have been performing a wide range of activities for the production of goods and services. These cooperatives make huge purchases of goods and services from the open market to support their operations. There was a felt need to provide a platform to them to avail competitive prices through a transparent and efficient process resulting in benefit to the members of the cooperative societies.
The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has been set up as a National Procurement Portal to provide an end-to-end online marketplace for Central and State Government Ministries/ Departments, and PSUs, etc., for the procurement of common-use goods and services in a transparent and efficient manner.
The Gross Merchandise Value of procurement using GeM was more than Rs 1 lakh crore in the FY 2021-22. There are around 54 lakh products listed across 9,702 product categories and 279 service categories. There was an estimated savings of around Rs 10,000 crore in the FY 2021-22.
Purchases through GeM provide various benefits. The cooperatives will get competitive prices through an open and transparent process, and this would be economically beneficial to the members of the societies.
They can procure from about 45 lakh authenticated sellers/ service providers available across the country on a single GeM platform. Following the standard procedures on GeM would lead to saving of time and reduction in the administrative burden. /BI/
