Govt to blacklist sellers on Amazon of public procurement for poor-quality goods, exorbitant prices

Goyal said GeM will help save Railways 10-15 per cent of Rs 70,000 crore spent per annum on procurement.

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday cautioned sellers on the public procurement portal – government e-marketplace (GeM) against selling goods of inferior quality or charging high prices. Addressing the e-National Public Procurement Conclave organised by GeM and lauding it in becoming a “game-changer” in the government procurement process, the minister “cautioned the unscrupulous sellers from pushing the poor quality goods or charging exorbitant prices,” said a statement by the Commerce Ministry. The minister added that such sellers will be blacklisted not only from the GeM portal but from the “entire government ecosystem.”

GeM had last year in September said that it will devise a mechanism for vendor assessment of all sellers on the marketplace instead of only for original equipment manufacturers to ensure the sale of quality goods, PTI had reported citing an official. In June this year, the marketplace has made it mandatory for all sellers to mention the country of origin while registering new products on the portal even as for existing products, sellers were asked to update the same. The move came amid growing resentment for Chinese goods following the Galwan valley clash between Indian and Chinese armed forces.

Goyal also urged more sellers and buyers to join GeM to give momentum to the “seamless, transparent, open and efficient and technology-driven” system of the marketplace. More sellers and orders would lead to more competition and availability of quality products at cheaper prices, the minister added.

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The public procurement marketplace’s integration with Indian Railways for its procurements, which is currently underway, will help save at least 10-15 per cent (nearly Rs 10,000 crore) of Rs 70,000 crore spent by Railways per annum on procurement, according to Goyal.

Ahead of the launch of its advanced version in few months, GeM had earlier this week enabled ‘staggered delivery’ feature for government departments, organisations, PSUs, etc. to schedule the delivery of products for up to 1 year at the time of bid creation itself. GeM currently has nearly 4.39 lakh sellers and service providers out of which close to 1.16 lakh are micro and small sellers with a majority share of 57.81 per cent in the total order value, as per data available on the GeM portal.