New Delhi: Indian Railways is committed to integrate with the government e-marketplace (GeM) portal to move all its procurement to the platform, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Sunday.
The railways' direct procurement of goods for its operations or its public sector undertakings or production units stood at about Rs 70,000 crore-Rs 75,000 crore, the Commerce and Industry and Railways Minister said.
"I am happy to share that GeM and Indian Railways are burning the midnight oil, working day and night to ensure this entire Rs 70,000 crore procurement on the GeM platform," Goyal said at the GeM-CII National Public Procurement Conclave 2020. "Our own belief is that it will save railways not less than 10-15 per cent and that could be a saving of as high as Rs 10,000 crore," he added.
Railways buys more than 98 per cent of its goods and services in India and moving this purchase to the GeM platform in the next "probably 8-12 months" will help in making procurement process more transparent, seamless, efficient and faster, Goyal said.
"The railways has committed itself fully to integrate with GeM and move all procurement there (GeM)...Imagine we will save 1000s and 1000s of man hours of procurement time.
"The amount of elaborate tendering, advertisements, bids, bids opening, reverse auction, all of that become so seamless that our digital system of the railways will flag the requirement on the GeM portal, and it will be available for the whole world to see and more and more people will be enticed to register on GeM as suppliers," Goyal said.
He added that if any supplier or vendor provides bad quality goods, it will be black listed not only on GeM, but throughout the government system.
"We will ensure that the entire government system does not entertain that company anymore," he said, adding that at a later stage, GeM will move from goods and services to contracts.
The minister said the government's public procurement would be in the range of $100-150 billion (about Rs 7.5 lakh crore-Rs 11.25 lakh crore), and probably more if one combines all the PSUs, state government and local bodies.
He said railways has identified the products which are imported and is working through RDSO (Research Design and Standards Organisation) to develop new vendors for those products.
He said the number of products that need RDSO approval have been reduced from 660 to about 400, and "now we are examining these 400 to reduce it further".
Meanwhile, Government e-Marketplace (GeM) CEO Talleen Kumar said that, "Over the next couple of months, GeM shall be rolling out GeM 4.0 which will be anchored in the unified procurement system," Kumar said at GeM-CII national public procurement conclave 2020.
He said that the functionality of other portals such as the Central Public Procurement portal, the Indian Railway Electronic Procurement System and the Defence Public Procurement portal will be brought onto GeM in a phased manner to provide a uniform experience to all
buyers.