By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, AUG 29, 2016: THE Commerce Secretary, Ms. Rita Teaotia, while inaugurating a one day hands on training workshop on Government e-Marketplace (GeM), stated that the payment process has been simplified and made time bound in GeM, thereby making it easy for suppliers to get their payment from buying Government organizations on time. The training program has been jointly organized by DGS&D, National Institute of Financial Management (NIFM), National e-Governance Division (NeGD), CII, FICCI, Assocham and MAIT.

In her Keynote address, Ms. Rita Teaotia highlighted that the fact that GeM has been developed within a short span of 5 months owing to the collaborative efforts of DGS&D, NeGD, Finance Ministry and several other Government agencies. Secretary Commerce stated that owing to the transparency, ease, efficiency and time-bound payment offered by GeM, it is the way forward and would very soon become the standard mode of procurement by Government agencies. Commerce Secretary also stated that GeM would be a game changer in public procurement and would give an impetus to Make in India by removing the entry barriers for doing business with the Government. Ms. Teaotia stated that although it has been made mandatory on GeM to make payment to the vendors within 10 days of receipt of goods/services, efforts should be made to further reduce this time span as time is money and ultimately the cost of delayed payment is born by the Government. She also stated that GeM will enable Government buyers to bypass the cumbersome tendering system and instead procure using a system that offers ease of operation similar to e-commerce sites.

The training session was attended by more than 200 suppliers from sectors such as Information Technology, Electrical goods, transport services etc, from across the country. Ms. Radha Chauhan CEO of NeGD (MeitY) in her address mentioned about the concept of GeM and how it has been developed.

Mr. Binoy Kumar, DG(S&D) in his address stated that GeM is a completely online and end-to-end integrated e-procurement portal for products and services and has been designed keeping in mind the need for Ease of Doing Business as well as transparency & efficiency. He stated that more training sessions are planned for both Government buyers as well as sellers in the coming days and the details of scheduled training programs shall be available on the GeM portal.

In his address, Mr. Charanjit Banerjee, DG CII complimented the Department of Commerce and DGS&D for having come up with a completely online portal for Government procurement, which would benefit not only the Government organizations but also the suppliers in particular and industry in general. Sh Banerjee stated that GeM has been welcomed by the industry and would encourage more and more entrepreneurs to start doing business with the Government organizations.