Government eMarketplace integrated with the Central Public Procurement Portal.

Government eMarketplace (GeM) has been integrated with the Central Public Procurement Portal (CPPP) for the creation of a Unified Procurement System. The integrated system with consolidate the entire public buying of goods and services onto a single platform.

Highlights

• On the platform, a function of ‘custom bid’ has also been created.
• The custom bid will allow a buyer to bid on GeM even though the category of product or service that the person needs is not available on the GeM portal.
• Further, the Integration of GeM with Indian Railway Electronic Procurement System and the Defence Public Procurement Portal is underway.

Significance of the  Unified Procurement System (UPS)

• The integrated system will improve the buying and selling experience and processes for ministries, departments and other agencies involved in the system.
• The portal would make all the government buyers including railways, defence and public sector undertakings to publish their high value tenders  for an estimated order value exceeding Rs 50 lakh.
• It will provide a single user experience to buyers and sellers.
• The system aims to consolidate the scattered vendor bases on publishing portals onto GeM.
• It would also lead to a better price discovery and dissemination of best practices in government or public procurement.
• The portal comprises of advanced features including:
  1.  Powerful search engine by using Natural Language Processing
  2.  Advanced analytics using artificial intelligence that include machine learning
  3. Revamped brand and product approval process and
  4. Fast creation of categories for goods and services by analysing the tender.

Government eMarketplace (GeM)

It is an online platform, by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, for public procurement in India. The GeM initiative was launched on August 9, 2016. The primary objective of the platform was to create an open and transparent procurement platform for government buyers. It is managed by Special Purpose Vehicle and is 100% Government-owned non-profit company.The portal provides a wide range of products such as office stationery and Automobiles. Theportal lists the services including logistics, transportation, waste management, web casting and analytics. 6,04,468 sellers and service providers are registered with the portal so far.