NEW DELHI: The commerce ministry will come up with a more dynamic Government e-Market (GeM) portal for public procurement purposes by upgrading the existing software of the platform.
Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said the existing software will be reworked and the work may take over a year to be completed.
GeM CEO P K Singh said they have floated the request-for-proposal for the project and it will be assigned to the successful bidder.
The work would start from January next year and it would take about 16-17 months to come up with the advanced version of the portal, Singh told reporters.
The portal was launched in August 2016 for online purchases of goods and services by all the central government ministries and departments.
Procurement of goods and services from GeM has crossed Rs 1.11 lakh crore so far this fiscal.
Goyal expressed hope that the figure may touch Rs 2 lakh crore by the end of this fiscal.
The minister said the improvement in the GeM Portal is an ongoing and evolving process.
Efforts are on to add new features and functionalities, he said.
Goyal also said that the roll-out of GeM services through last-mile CSC-VLEs ( Village level entrepreneurs) and PO-CSC (common service centres) operators ( Post Offices) will spur local procurement.
In September 2022, GeM “Seller Samvaad” events were held in 26 cities across India in collaboration with the Press Information Bureau (PIB) to facilitate an informal interaction of GeM sellers and service providers with members of regional and local media to document their journey in public procurement.
In May, GeM, CSC-SPV and India Post had inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the advocacy, outreach, mobilization and capacity-building of last-mile Govt buyers, sellers and service providers in public procurement.
