April 25, 2024
April 25, 2024
ITANAGAR, Jul 11: Chief Minister Pema Khandu has welcomed the state’s partnership with Government e-Marketplace (GeM) under the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry and called on all business houses operating in the state to take full advantage of the provisions.
GeM is an online market platform to facilitate procurement of goods and services by various ministries and agencies of the government.
On Tuesday, state Development Commissioner (Finance) Ashish Kundra and GeM Chief Executive Officer S Radha Chauhan signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in presence of Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The signing was during the National Consultative Workshop on GeM in New Delhi.
After the MoU, Khandu said GeM will open up the world for buyers and sellers without having to actually move out of their respective places. He appealed particularly to the indigenous business houses of the state to be registered with GeM for boosting their trade.
The chief minister said GeM will become the e-procurement portal of the state government for transparency and faster and smoother processing and therefore urged all local contractors, dealers, suppliers, trading houses, etc to get registered on it.
“GeM is a completely paperless, cashless and system driven e-market place that enables procurement of common use goods and services with minimal human interface. It will be completely transparent and a vendor can compete bids from anywhere in the country,” Khandu said.
He has directed the Finance Department to issue guidelines to all government departments of the state in this regard.
Arunachal Pradesh is the sixth state to have signed a pact with GeM. The other states are Gujarat, Telangana, Puducherry, Assam and Andhra Pradesh.
Presently, more than 40,000 products in about 150 product categories and hiring of transport service are available on the GeM portal, through which transactions for more than Rs 140 crore have already been processed.
The department of IT and Communication headed by Secretary Sonam Chombay and Special Secretary Prince Dhawan is the nodal agency for implementing GeM in Arunachal Pradesh.
Dhawan appealed to local traders to register on the GeM portal and be a part of the supply chain not only in the state but the entire country. He said a special workshop will be organised soon for the business community to make them familiar with the portal and processes involved for maximum benefit.
Being an open platform, GeM offers no entry barriers to bonafide suppliers who wish to do business with the government and reduce their ‘administrative’ cost involved in pursuing officers for timely payment.
Officials said GeM is a far better system than the existing one, which relies more on financial instruments (EMD in case of tenders) to guarantee good conduct by the suppliers. In the existing system, there is zero check on the antecedents of the suppliers for small value procurements (up to Rs 1 lakh) whose cumulative value is huge across the government organisations.
GeM does a 100% online verification of all vendors irrespective of the value of procurement.
