Context

The Union Cabinet has approved the registration of cooperative societies as ‘Buyers’ on Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform. 

Government e-Marketplace:

• Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has been set up as a National Procurement Portal to provide an end-to-end online market place for Central and State Government Ministries/ Departments, and PSUs etc. for procurement of common-use goods and services in a transparent and efficient manner. 
• The GeM was launched in 2016 by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to create an open and transparent procurement platform for government buyers.
• Three pillars of GeM are inclusion, transparency and efficiency.

About

About:

• Ministry of Cooperation is encouraging Multi State Cooperative Societies and Cooperative Societies registered under State Cooperative Acts to join the GeM platform for the benefit of their members and hopes that more and more cooperatives Societies will get benefit of this by joining GeM platform.
• GeM authorities will provide a dedicated on-boarding process for cooperatives, technical infrastructure and support for on-boarding and transactions, via available contact centres, in-field training, and other support services.
  

How registration of cooperative societies as ‘Buyers’ will help?

• At present, there are about 8.54 lakh cooperatives in India with about 29 crore membership.
• They have been performing a wide range of activities for the production of goods and services.
• These cooperatives make huge purchases of goods and services from the open market to support their operations. 
• There was a felt need to provide a platform to them to avail competitive prices through a transparent and efficient process resulting in benefit to the members of the cooperative societies.
• This will enable the cooperative societies to access more than 45 Lakh vendors on a single platform and to follow a transparent, economic and efficient procurement system.

Benefits of purchases through GeM:

• The Cooperatives would get competitive prices through an open and transparent process, and this would be economically beneficial to the members of the societies.
• The Cooperative societies can procure from about 45 lakh authenticated sellers/ service providers available across the country on a single GeM platform,
• Following the standard procedures on GeM would lead to saving of time and reduction in the administrative burden.
• It would enhance the credibility of the cooperatives as complaints of mismanagement of funds will get reduced.