The Government e-Market (GeM) portal was launched in August 2016 for online purchases of goods and services by all central government ministries and departments.
GeM CEO Talleen Kumar said the order value in 2020-21 is projected at Rs 37,000 crore, up from Rs 22,896 crore last year.
“With the integration of the Ministry of Railways completed by March 2021, GeM is heading towards an order value of over Rs a lakh crore for the next fiscal year, which will represent a ‘3X’ increase from levels current, “Kumar told PTI.
Public Sector Units (PSUs) have purchased goods and services worth over Rs 3,372 crore on GeM so far this year. Likewise, the Ministry of Defense has purchased goods and / or services worth over Rs 3,406 crore this year so far.
He said the integration of railways involves the development of 42 features and functionality specific to railways. Kumar also said that GeM is gradually moving towards the vision of a unified procurement system with the aim of consolidating all public procurement on a single, cohesive platform that can lead to economies of scale, more efficient price discovery and sharing of best practices.
To promote the sale of Made in India products, he said, GeM captures “country of origin” data for products already on the platform.
GeM also made it possible to indicate the percentage of local content in the platform’s products. Therefore, government buyers can now view and filter products for both their ‘country of origin’ and the ‘percentage local content, ”he added.
In addition, he added that the next version of the platform – GeM 5.0 – is stepping up the use of new technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence), including machine learning and deep learning.
Areas where AI will be used include catalog management; planning, forecasting and monitoring of purchases; intelligent virtual assistant to facilitate buyer / seller journeys; fraud and anomaly detection; customer mapping, segmentation and behavior prediction.
