Work contracts on GeM mulled, platform to become world’s largest govt procurement portal

New Delhi: India’s national procurement portal Government e-Marketplace (GeM) plans to bring work contracts such as road and building construction on the platform, and will send the proposal to the commerce and industry ministry, Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, GeM said Thursday, adding that the portal is set to become the largest government procurement platform in the world, surpassing South Korea’s KONEPS by the end of the current fiscal.

In FY24, the procurement from GeM had crossed Rs 4 lakh crore.

At present, only goods and services providers are registered on the GeM and it is mandatory for government departments and agencies to procure from the portal.


“We are doing stakeholder consultations on this. The last round is next week,” Singh said, adding that the proposal will then be sent to the commerce and industry ministry.

At present, big contractors which provide these works are not there on the GeM. Allowing procurement of these works would make the platform a national procurement portal for all kinds of purchases by states, centre and government agencies.

The platform is likely to suggest implementation of this new feature in a gradual manner and not make it mandatory.
Of the total public procurement globally, about 90% are work contracts.

Earlier, GeM had issued an approach paper for stakeholder consultations on exploring an enabling approach to procurement of works on GeM in line with the mandate of the Unified Procurement System.

The procurement of goods and services through GeM crossed Rs 1.24 lakh crore in first quarter of FY25 and going by this pace, it will become the world's largest platform, Singh said.

The procurement by central ministries including CPSEs surpassed Rs 1 lakh crore in this period with ministries of coal, defence and petroleum and gas emerging as the top buyers. CPSEs accounted for more than Rs 91,000 crore.

To further promote ease of doing business especially MSMEs, the new revenue policy of GeM mandates that the sellers and service providers be charged only 0.3% of the order value from0.45% earlier on orders above Rs 5 lakh.

These transaction charges would be capped at Rs 3 lakh as against Rs 72.5 lakh being changed earlier.

Monitoring, manpower

A comprehensive monitoring tool is planned to be used on GeM that provides a unified view on performance of the system.

A project to geo-tag addresses of the platform’s users to provide enriched, geography based visualisation of transactions such as MSMEs, ODOP sales and product concentrations is being planned.

Similarly, ransomware protection and dark web monitoring is planned to be put in place for GeM.

Singh said GeM SAHAYAK programme which aims to create a pan-India network of 6,000-7,000 trained and certified accredited trainers, would be rolled out.

The Sahayaks would offer their services to potential and existing GeM sellers in navigating on the portal and enhancing business opportunities. Buyers too will benefit from their services in terms of creation of bids and other value-added services.