No Definition of Active Sellers on GeM, All Have Equal Opportunity To Sell: Piyush Goel

The Indian Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to equality. Before the law, everyone is equal, and there can be no discrimination based on religion, race, caste, gender, place of birth, or anything else.

This equality is also visible in GeM.

According to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, all sellers registered on the government's e-commerce portal for public procurement Government e-Marketplace (GeM) have an equal opportunity to participate in the marketplace and bids, even though there is no definition of an active supplier (seller) on GeM.

He further stated that on GeM, there is no definition of an active supplier. Registered suppliers determine whether or not to participate in any bid based on their interest, product availability, and other reasons. All registered vendors have an equal opportunity to bid and participate in the marketplace. Furthermore, he stated that the successful award of an order is based on the buyer's requirement and the seller's capacity to meet the requirement by giving the most competitive price.

In e-commerce jargon, active sellers are those who have sold at least one product per month or have at least one product up for sale. The number of active sellers assists e-commerce platforms in determining critical parameters such as total goods sold, the total cost to sellers, the number of products listed, and overall marketplace growth.

GeM, which went live in August 2016, had 55.9 lakh sellers and 65,039 buyers as of December 18, 2022. So far, 1.25 crore orders have been submitted with a total transaction value of Rs 3.44 lakh crore. According to the most recent data from the platform, 8.30 lakh of the total sellers were micro and small sellers, accounting for 55.31 percent of the order value.

Mr. Goyal praised GeM's accomplishment in becoming a game changer in government procurement and urged more buyers and sellers to join the system. He expressed trust in GeM's ability to unlock value and save money for the country's development, stating that it has aided in transparent, seamless, easy, efficient, and speedier procurements. All of the information is in one place, and any outlier attempting to game the system can be immediately discovered. He described the government's move to charge buyers interest for late payments in GeM as an important milestone.He also characterized the government's decision to charge buyers interest for late payments in GeM as a significant step forward.

He claims that GeM has the advantage of being seamless, transparent, open, efficient, and technology-driven and that this will gain traction as more buyers and sellers join the system. More procurement orders will encourage more vendors to join, resulting in increased competition and the availability of high-quality products at lower rates.

The government e-Marketplace (GeM) is the Public Procurement Portal for all Central Government and State Government Ministries, Departments, Public Sector Units (PSUs), and connected organizations. GeM strives to make government procurement more transparent, efficient, and inclusive. The following are the benefits of GeM: It serves as a centralized and unified public procurement platform for government buyer organizations and goods and services suppliers, and is accompanied by:

•  Policy changes for the current public procurement ecosystem
•   Increasing Inclusion and Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) with the Government (especially for smaller organizations such as MSMEs)
• Process standardization supported by a regulatory framework
•   A fully automated system made possible by breakthroughs in technology

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