The government has made ‘Country of Origin’ mandatory for Government e Marketplace (GeM) to promote Make in India and Atma Nirbhar Bharat. It emphasises on the need to make India self reliant by investing in indigenous products.
What is Government e Marketplace?
Public procurement forms a very important part of Government activity and its reform is a bold step of the Government with the aim to transform the way in which procurement of goods and services is done by the Government Ministries and Departments, Public Sector Undertakings and other apex autonomous bodies of the Central Government. It is a completely paperless, cashless and system driven e-market place that enables procurement of common use goods and services with minimal human interface. Being an open platform, GeM offers no entry barriers to bonafide suppliers who wish to do business with the Government.
Initiative of the Government
- GeM, a Special Purpose Vehicle under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has made it mandatory for sellers to enter the Country of Origin while registering all new products on GeM. Further, sellers, who had already uploaded their products before the introduction of this new feature on GeM, are being reminded regularly to update the Country of Origin, with a warning that their products shall be removed from GeM if they fail to update the same.
- GeM has also enabled a provision for indication of the percentage of local content in products. With this new feature, now, the Country of Origin as well as the local content percentage are visible in the marketplace for all items.
- Make in India filter has now been enabled on the portal. Buyers can choose to buy only those products that meet the minimum 50% local content criteria.
- In case of bids, buyers can now reserve any bid for Class I local suppliers (local content > 50%). For those bids below INR 200 crore, only Class I and Class II local suppliers (local content > 50% and > 20% respectively) are eligible to bid, with Class I suppliers getting purchase preference.
- The Marketplace has facilitated entry of small local sellers in public procurement, while implementing Make in India and MSME purchase preference policies of the Government in the true sense.
