Procurement of goods and services on the government’s online public procurement platform, Government e-Market (GeM), touched ₹1-lakh crore in 2021-22, growing 160 per cent over the previous fiscal.

“Happy to know that @GeM_India has achieved order value of Rs 1 Lakh Crore in a single year! This is a significant increase from previous years,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on Thursday. “The GeM platform is especially empowering MSMEs, with 57% of order value coming from MSME sector,” he said.

GeM CEO Prashant Kumar Singh pointed out that the sharp increase in procurement on GeM in 2021-22 was unprecedented. “Since inception, the cumulative Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of GeM reached ₹1-lakh crore over four-and-a-half years, on March 23, 2021, whereas the GMV of GeM in the current financial year surpassed ₹1-lakh crore in less than a year,” he said at a press conference on Thursday.

The number of orders placed on the platform in the current fiscal was over 31.5 lakh, posting a growth of 22 per cent. In a short span of five years, GeM has become one of the biggest government e-procurement platforms in the world, said Singh.

CPSEs procured goods and services on the portal, approximately valued at ₹43,000 crore during the fiscal, growing by 508 per cent over the previous fiscal, per government figures.

States continued to be an important stakeholder with about 30 per cent contribution to total GMV.

The GeM initiative was launched on August 9, 2016 by Ministry of Commerce and Industry to create an open and transparent procurement platform for government buyers. 

According to an independent assessment made by the World Bank, average savings for buyers in Government e Marketplace portal is about 9.75 per cent on the median price, a press statement issued by the Commerce & Industry Ministry pointed out.

In an analysis in the Economic Survey 2021-22, cost comparison of various commodities on GeM with those of popular online platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart showed that GeM prices were 9.5 per cent lower. As many as ten out of 22 commodities in the sample were cheaper on the GeM portal as compared to other platforms, the release said.