New Delhi, Aug 28, 2022, By Special Correspondent

New Delhi, Aug 28: Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal reviewed the progress of Government e-Marketplace (GeM) where he gave suggestions to accelerate delivery timelines as well as provide more flexibility to government buyers to choose products as per their delivery needs.

 

Among many other things, various functionalities of GeM, as well as timeliness in procurement and delivery were reviewed in detail, an official release said here Sunday.

 

It was noted that more than 95% of all the physical order deliveries since April 2022 happened on time in cases where online fulfillment and payment was done via GeM.

 

While consistent improvement was observed in the on-time delivery across all transaction types (Direct Purchase, L1, Bids/Reverse auctions) via GeM, the Minister shared specific suggestions to revise thresholds and add features to further accelerate delivery timelines as well as provide more flexibility to government buyers to choose products as per their delivery needs.

 

Goyal suggested bringing in end to end online fulfillment and payment for all transactions by buyers on GeM and to improve monitoring of delivery against timelines.

 

The minister also emphasised on the need to bring all public procurement on the completely online and transparent portal viz GeM for achieving economies of scale and bringing about social inclusiveness by promoting Micro and Small Enterprises.

 

GeM’s initiatives for tight monitoring and anomaly detection in procurement, including use of AI-ML to detect and report potential collusion and fraud were reviewed. 

 

Goyal suggested strong legal and punitive actions against buyers and suppliers against such activities.

 

In addition to detecting anomalies, GeM also plans to use AI-ML to make proactive feature simplifications and product suggestions to buyers to ensure informed decision making and savings in public spendings.

 

Significant technical upgrades have been planned by GeM to enable cutting edge use cases and improve user experience on the platform.