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The Government e Marketplace (GeM) marked its 10th Foundation Day at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, with Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Shri Piyush Goyal calling for a new AI-enabled platform to make public procurement more efficient, transparent and competitive.
GeM was launched on 9 August 2016 under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and now has more than 25 lakh sellers and over 1.37 lakh buyer organisations, with cumulative procurement of over Rs 20 lakh crore through more than 3.78 crore orders.
Micro and Small Enterprises number 12.28 lakh on the platform and have fulfilled orders worth more than Rs 9 lakh crore — 45.6% of cumulative Gross Merchandise Value; more than 2.24 lakh women-led MSEs have fulfilled over 50 lakh orders worth more than Rs 1 lakh crore, and 42,242 startups have secured orders worth more than Rs 65,633 crore.
A customised 'My Stamp' was launched to commemorate the milestone, along with a dedicated nationwide five-digit short code '14550' for the GeM Helpdesk.
Five priorities were set for the next decade: last-mile access through Suvidha Kendras, deeper AI use for price intelligence and marketplace integrity, integration of States, public enterprises, panchayats and cooperatives, credit and sustainability through GeM Sahay and TReDS linkages, and university outreach.
Before GeM, central government purchasing of common-use goods ran through the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals, which negotiated rate contracts that departments then bought against — a paper-based system with limited competition and little visibility. GeM replaced that model. Rule 149 of the General Financial Rules, 2017 makes procurement through GeM mandatory for goods and services available on the platform, which is what converted GeM from an option into the default channel and drove its scale. The economics work through three mechanisms. Price discovery: many sellers listing the same item under public view compresses margins in a way rate contracts never did. Access: a small manufacturer in a district town can sell to a central ministry without a Delhi office or a tender agent, which is why 12.28 lakh MSEs account for 45.6% of the platform's value. And traceability: every order leaves a digital record, so procurement data becomes auditable and analysable rather than scattered across departmental files. The next-decade priorities announced follow directly from what a mature marketplace still lacks — AI for price sanity and marketplace integrity to catch collusive or anomalous pricing, and credit linkages through GeM Sahay and TReDS because a small seller's binding constraint after winning an order is working capital until payment arrives.
Simple Analogy: DGS&D was a government purchase department with a catalogue. GeM is a marketplace where the government is the customer and every price is visible to everyone at once.
Provide a unified, transparent and efficient online platform for public procurement of goods and services
Key: Launched 9 August 2016 under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry; procurement through GeM is mandated by Rule 149 of the General Financial Rules, 2017 for goods and services available on the platform
Provide sellers with frictionless working capital finance at the point of order acceptance
Key: A lending application built on the Open Credit Enablement Network approach, enabling small sellers to borrow against a confirmed GeM order; scaling it is one of the five stated priorities for GeM's next decade
Discount trade receivables of MSMEs electronically so they are paid before the buyer's credit period expires
Key: The Trade Receivables Discounting System, an RBI-regulated electronic platform; deeper GeM-TReDS linkage is among the announced priorities for addressing MSME working capital
Provide last-mile assistance for registration, cataloguing, training and grievance redressal
Key: Physical facilitation centres whose expansion across districts is the first of the five priorities announced for the next decade
Give purchase preference to suppliers of goods and services with specified local content
Key: Issued by DPIIT; GeM operationalises the local-content preference by capturing local content declarations at the listing stage
Create dedicated market access for startups and for women entrepreneurs and self-help groups
Key: Storefronts within GeM designed to lower entry barriers for these segments; 42,242 startups have secured orders worth more than Rs 65,633 crore and 2.24 lakh women-led MSEs have fulfilled over 50 lakh orders
Mandates procurement of goods and services through the Government e Marketplace where they are available on the platform — the provision that made GeM the default procurement channel for ministries and departments
The overarching framework governing public financial management and procurement by the Union Government, which replaced the GFR 2005
Provides purchase preference to Class-I and Class-II local suppliers based on local content thresholds, operationalised through GeM listings
Requires central ministries, departments and public sector undertakings to source a specified minimum share of their annual procurement from MSEs, with sub-targets for SC/ST and women-owned enterprises — the policy GeM's MSE and Womaniya figures are measured against
GeM belongs to the same family as UPI, Aadhaar and DigiLocker — state-built rails on which private participants transact, and the release explicitly positions it as a model India can offer as a global benchmark
The push on GeM Sahay and TReDS addresses the structural problem that a small supplier's real risk is not winning the order but being paid for it — the same problem the MSMED Act's 45-day payment rule attacks legally
Removing the tender-agent intermediary between a district-level manufacturer and a central ministry is one of the clearest measurable Ease of Doing Business gains of the last decade
Competitive price discovery on a mandatory platform is the mechanism by which GeM is argued to deliver value for public money — the claim that underlies the 'greater value for public money' framing in the release
GS Paper 2 > Governance > Transparency and e-Governance; GS Paper 3 > Indian Economy
General Awareness > Government Platforms, MSMEs and Economy
General Awareness > Government Initiatives
The economic cost of food grains to the Food Corporation of India is Minimum Support Price and bonus (if any) paid to the farmers plus
Answer: procurement incidentals and distribution cost
Consider the following statements: 1. In the case of all cereals, pulses and oil-seeds, the procurement at Minimum Support Price (MSP) is unlimited in any State/UT of India. 2. In the case of cereals and pulses, the MSP is fixed in any State/UT at a level to which the market price will never rise. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: Neither 1 nor 2
GeM figures and public procurement rules appear regularly in banking general awareness and periodically in Prelims
Government e Marketplace — the unified online public procurement platform launched on 9 August 2016 under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry
The rule mandating procurement of goods and services through GeM where they are available on the platform
The lending application giving GeM sellers access to working capital finance against confirmed orders
Trade Receivables Discounting System — the RBI-regulated electronic platform for discounting MSME trade receivables
The total value of goods and services transacted on a marketplace; MSEs account for 45.6% of GeM's cumulative GMV