Centre to incentivise ministries, state govts to buy via GeM

Various central ministries and state governments will be incentivised to procure products and services from the Government e-Marketplace (GeM).

In a meeting to review the performance of the GeM, commerce minister Piyush Goyal asked the representative of various ministries and departments to nominate a joint secretary to identify new products and services to be added to the platform.

The review meeting was attended by representatives from the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and secretaries from the ministries of petroleum and natural gas, housing and urban affairs, new and renewable energy and power.

GeM reported gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 23,000 crore ($3.3 billion) for the financial year 2018-19 across 1.7 million transactions by central and state governments and public sector companies.

GMV is a measure of the total value of goods sold by an online platform. Flipkart’s GMV for 2017-18 was $7.5 billion, according to media reports.

The government has set a GMV target of Rs 1 lakh crore (over $14 billion) for the financial year 2019-20 for the platform.

Startups including services platform UrbanClap and furniture and appliances rental platform Rentomojo were in the process of registering on the marketplace.,

IndiaTech, the industry body for Indian internet companies,  has demanded simpler integration for companies on the trading platform.