CEO of the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), Prashant Kumar Singh, said to CNBC-TV18 that an outreach to the Department of Financial Services (DFS) and Public Sector Banks (PSBs) has resulted in an increase in use of the platform by financial institutions.

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He added that insurance bids are also picking up in a big way, with bids worth over Rs. 2,000 crores also being done on GeM. As per him, bids worth Rs. 557 crores for 6,750 ATMs by the State Bank of India (SBI) are at the order placement stage, while bids worth Rs. 7,039 crores have already been published for 13,500 ATMs. While SBI's bid worth Rs. 1,300 crores for 7,500 cash recycler machines is at its financial stage, Canara Bank's core banking solution bid worth Rs. 1,749 crores is at the order placement stage.

While GeM has targeted achieving a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of Rs. 3 lakh crores this year with a required rate of growth beyond 1.5 times year-on-year (YoY), it had clocked Rs. 1.10 lakh crores in GMV by the end of August 2023. The CEO observed that growth was noted across sectors, CPSEs and states; while the share of services grew from 15-20 percent to 30 percent and is rising further.

GeM's GMV in FY 23-24 for the Coal Ministry has been over Rs. 12,000 crores, compared to Rs. 4,287 crores in FY 22-23, while Coal India & its subsidiaries have awarded bids worth Rs. 10,700 crore in Handling, Transport and Mining Services in FY 23-24.

The CEO said that the E-bill development plan is in its final stages, and any delay in payment by buyers by over 10 days will result in penal interest of one percent per month. Motivated to scale up GeM Sahai, he stated that the initiative will be open to parties beyond sole proprietors even as there are hopes of most banks joining in.

While there is an insistence on opening up of a GeM pool account by cooperatives to ensure timely payments, GeM's plans to create QR codes for 300 products is in pilot phase where buyers will be able to scan QR codes on the website and view 3D models of objects.

The CEO explained that the platform is trying to work maximum on the technology front, stating that it shouldn't be seen as a government portal lacking technical features. He added that while augmented reality (AR) isn't being aggressively used by many private portals, GeM is looking to scale up the initiative.

Having broken up its transition into different modules, GeM is actively involved in its hand holding and knowledge transfer. The CEO assured that the new service provider is doing well, with 70 percent of functional knowledge transfer & 40 percent of technical transition already done.

Also Read:TCS joins hands with govt to transform GeM platform

First Published:Sept 4, 2023 6:26 PM IST