The Union Cabinet on Wednesday expanded the scope of the public procurement portal Government e-Marketplace (GeM) to allow cooperative societies to register as buyers.
The decision is expected to help cooperatives in getting competitive prices through an open and transparent process. An official statement said that more than 8,54,000 registered cooperatives and their 270 million members will be benefitted.
“Since the societies have more than 270 million members, procurement through GeM will not only economically benefit the common man, but it would also enhance the credibility of the cooperatives,” the statement said.
Presently, the registration of cooperatives as “buyers” was not covered within the existing mandate of GeM and was open for procurement by central and state government departments, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and autonomous and local bodies.
While it is still not available for use by private sector buyers, the government, as well as the private sector, can become suppliers.
The government had launched GeM five years ago as an end-to-end e-marketplace to facilitate transparent and efficient e-procurement of commonly-used goods and services required by the Centre, states and PSUs. It is a government-to-business platform. As far as the implementation is concerned, a validated list of cooperatives will be boarded on GeM for pilot as well as subsequent scale-up. This will be decided by the Ministry of Cooperation in consultation with GeM.
“This will ensure that technical capacity and logistics requirements of the GeM system are taken into account while deciding the pace of onboarding of cooperative as buyers on GeM. GeM will provide a dedicated onboarding process for cooperatives, provide the technical infrastructure to support additional users on existing portal, as well as provide assistance to cooperatives for onboarding and transaction journeys, via available contact centres, in-field training and other support services,” the statement said.
The Ministry of Cooperation will encourage the cooperative societies to make use of the GeM platform for the procurement of goods and services. To ensure timely payments to sellers, the modalities of payment systems will be decided by GeM in consultation with the Ministry of Cooperation.
Going ahead, GeM may also charge a transaction fee from cooperatives, which will be decided in consultation with the Ministry of Cooperation. “Such charges shall not be more than the charges which GeM would charge to other government buyers. This will be planned to ensure self-sustainability of operations for GeM, and hence no major financial implication is expected for the government,” the statement said.
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