Government To Integrate Central Public Procurement Portal With Its E-Commerce Platform ‘GeM’ By September

The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) office is planning to integrated its GeM platform with the central public procurement portal (CPPP) to further improve the buying and selling process for departments, ministries and other agencies, reports Economic Times.

Launched by the Commerce Ministry in August 2016, GeM is an online platform for public procurement. It was launched with an objective of creating an open and transparent procurement platform for government.

The GeM GeM Chief Executive Officer Talleen Kumar said they are working to add over 100 new features in the existing portal to make it more dynamic, smart and transparent.

"These new features will be part of the new GeM 4.0. The work will be implemented by September 2020," Kumar said.

On the merger of the CPPP with the GeM, Kumar said that a unified procurement system will consolidate the entire government procurement into a single platform leading to economies of scale, better price discovery and sharing of best practices.

According to the reports, the government has made it mandatory for all the ministries and departments to procure goods and services from its e-marketplace.

The portal offers a wide range of products from office stationery to vehicles with automobiles, computers and office furniture being the top product categories.

Public procurement worth Rs 23,000 crore was made through GeM during the April 2019- 4 March 2020 period, reports Times of India.