Piyush Goyal warns officials to stay alert against cartelisation, collusion in GeM

He said operations should be audited regularly to ensure that all technical and financial aspects of GeM stay strong all the time.

Goyal, the Minister for Commerce and Industry, Textiles, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, also called for reducing and capping the transaction charges so that more traders are attracted to the GeM portal for increasing the volume of business.

“Stay alert against cartelisation and collusion in GEM,” warned the minister.

Goyal asked the officials to make GeM more user and commerce friendly so that ease of doing business can be further promoted.

“He also directed officials to significantly reduce and cap the transaction charges so that more traders are attracted to the GeM portal,” an official statement said.

The minister asked the GeM team to use Artificial Intelligence and further simplify the system.

He said as the volume of operations grow, AI would be needed to bring most appropriate buyers and sellers together for transactions.

“Use of AI would also act as a watchdog against business malpractices like collusion and cartelisation which often sneak in online business platforms,” Goyal said.

He cautioned GeM officials to keep a watch on such things.

“Goyal said that the transparency of the system should be strengthened and no one should ever get a chance to raise doubts on the integrity of GeM platform,” the statement added.

The minister was informed that the pilot project to integrate GeM with the Indian Railways E-Procurement System (IREPS) will be launched by next month while the process of integrating GeM with India Post and Ministry of Panchayati Raj is in progress.

Goyal asked GeM authorities to wrap up the pending audit by the Directorate of Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification.

GeM is a 100 per cent government owned company set up under the aegis of Department of Commerce for procurement of goods and services by Central and State government organisations.