Union Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday announced that more than 300 cooperatives, including Amul and IFFCO, have been onboarded as buyers in the government’s public procurement portal Government e-Marketplace (GeM) to procure goods from lakhs of MSMEs and other businesses.
While addressing the event, Shah said: “The doors have now opened for co-operatives to buy from the GeM portal”.
The Union Cabinet in June this year approved the inclusion of cooperatives as buyers on GeM to “bring transparency into cooperatives, help them benefit from the GeM marketplace, and give GeM sellers access to a bigger base of buyers,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur told reporters in a Cabinet briefing. Through GeM, cooperatives would now be able to procure goods from around 45 lakh sellers on GeM.
In the first phase, all eligible cooperatives, having a turnover/deposits of ₹ 100 crore, will be able to start placing orders on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal. There are more than 8.5 lakh cooperatives in India. On the launch programme, the cooperative societies have been onboarded and enabled as buyers on the GeM.
Major cooperatives that have been onboarded on Tuesday include IFFCO, KRIBHCO, NAFED, Amul and Saraswat Co-op Bank. It is expected that orders worth ₹ 25 crore will be placed on the day of the launch.
While addressing the event, Mr Shah said more than 300 cooperatives societies, including 45 multi-state cooperative societies, have been onboarded on the launch.
Amit Shah asked the cooperatives to also register themselves as sellers on the GeM platform as it will provide a huge platform to sell their products to a large pool of government buyers.
The minister also asked cooperatives to change themselves by bringing transparency in their election process, recruitment and purchasing activities.
According to the Cooperation ministry, 589 cooperatives have been shortlisted for onboarding on the GeM portal and NCUI has reached out to all cooperative federations and conducted virtual meets of national and state federations and of eligible cooperatives sector-wise to update them about the benefits of selling via GeM portal.
National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) President Dileep Sanghani termed it a historic day for cooperatives, saying this would help them in a big way.
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