GeM Portal: Procurement closed for a week on, loss of crores expected

New Delhi, 26th November , 2024 :

The GeM portal, created for ease of government procurement, will remain closed for a week. According to the information available on the Gem portal, this portal will not work from midnight of 26-27 November to 5 December. It has been estimated that businesses worth about seven thousand crore rupees will not be possible during this period.

It is surprising that a mission critical portal will be closed for 7 days while other comparable portals like Amazon and Flipkart do not have outages for minutes or hours.

Buyers on the portal have been advised to carry out business operations keeping in mind this technical shutdown.
In the fiscal year 2023-24, the portal facilitated procurement worth Rs 4 lakh crore by central and state government departments and public sector enterprises.

Last year Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was selected as a strategic partner by the Government of India to transform the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) into a state-of-the-art public procurement platform.
The GeM platform provides an end-to-end online marketplace for central and state government bodies, including public sector undertakings, for procurement of common use goods and services in a transparent and efficient manner.

It is said on the portal “The GeM portal is undergoing a major technical overhaul and is likely to be unavailable from 00:00 hrs of 27th November 2024 to 23:59 Hrs of 5th December 2024. It will be inaccessible for user transactions. Therefore, buyers are advised to preplan their activities including procurement, payment to the seller, CRAC generation, etc. Sellers are advised to plan their activities including delivery, payment of transaction charges, invoicing etc.”

Launched in September 2017, the GeM portal serves as a platform for online purchases of goods and services by all central government ministries and departments. The procurement by central organizations on the portal in October amounted to approximately Rs 30,264 crore. Since its inception, over 9.7 lakh micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have registered on GeM.

These enterprises have received orders exceeding Rs 4.19 lakh crore, accounting for around 40% of the total procurement value. Globally, South Korea’s KONEPS is recognized as the largest platform of its kind. GeM ranks second in this category, followed by Singapore’s GeBIZ.
The growth of GeM highlights its significant role in streamlining government procurement processes in India.