Overview
- Official Commerce Ministry figures released Tuesday show procurement from micro and small enterprises on the Government e‑Marketplace rose from Rs 69 crore in 2016–17 to more than Rs 8.69 lakh crore today.
- MSE registrations on GeM climbed from 2,396 in 2016–17 to about 11.9 lakh, and participation by women, startups and SC/ST sellers has grown sharply with procurement values of roughly Rs 93,327 crore, Rs 61,400 crore and Rs 21,800 crore respectively.
- GeM CEO Mihir Kumar said the portal recorded gross merchandise value above Rs 5 lakh crore in the last financial year and cited 74 lakh cumulative orders, a figure that conflicts with the Commerce Ministry’s report of over 2.17 crore orders.
- The platform has been used for large public‑health buying, with ministry figures showing more than 324 crore vaccine doses and 199 crore syringes procured through GeM, and the portal now deploys AI and analytics to spot abnormal buyer or seller behaviour and strengthen price discovery.
- Launched in 2016 with about Rs 422 crore of business, GeM was designed to cut human interface and open government buying to more sellers and the current scale could deepen small firms’ access to public contracts and produce fiscal savings via transparent online bidding.