New Delhi: The procurement of goods and services through government's portal GeM rose by about 50 percent to over Rs 4 lakh crore during April-January this fiscal due to higher buying activities by various ministries and departments, an official statement said on Friday.
The Government e-Market (GeM) portal was launched on August 9, 2016, for online purchases of goods and services by all central government ministries and departments.
"The GeM has surpassed last years' historic high gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 4 lakh crore within 10 months of the current fiscal. As of January 23, GeM has clocked a GMV of Rs 4.09 lakh crore, which marks a growth of nearly 50 per cent over the corresponding period last fiscal," the commerce and industry ministry said.
Out of this, the services segment accounted for Rs 2.54 lakh crore, whereas product area procurement was Rs 1.55 lakh crore, it said.
"With an emphasis on expansion of bouquet of services offerings on GeM, 19 new service categories have been introduced on the portal in 2024-25," it said adding by facilitating procurement of specialised services like printing of debit cards, bulk email services, dark fibre leasing, operations management of data centres and more, the platform has enabled government entities to source from reliable vendors resulting in significant efficiency gains.
The ministry also said that the ministries of Coal, Defence, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Power and Steel were the top five procurers on GeM.
"With a transacted order value of nearly Rs 1.63 lakh crore, the Ministry of Coal has emerged as the top procurer, with more than 320 high-value bids, worth about Rs 42,000 crore, placed for Handling and Transport Services by Coal public sector units," it said.
The platform has over 1.6 lakh government buyers and over 22.5 lakh sellers and service providers.
(PSU Watch– India's Business News centre that places the spotlight on PSUs, Bureaucracy, Defence and Public Policy is now on Google News. Click here to follow. Also, join PSU Watch Channel in your Telegram. You may also follow us on Twitter here and stay updated.)