Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The government has spent Rs 60,432 crore on procurement from MSEs under the Public Procurement Policy, a whopping 42 per cent more than the set target, tweeted MSME minister Narayan Rane on Friday.
The Tweet read, “Through the Public Procurement Policy, the Central Government is promoting small-scale enterprises by purchasing the products of MSEs. In the financial year 22-23, the government spent 60432 Cr. (42% more than the target). Our government is creating a simple and transparent environment for MSMEs.”
The government had set the target of Rs 42,705 crores for procurement from MSEs in the financial year 2022-23.
The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is the national public procurement portal of goods and services for Central and State Government bodies that were set up to bring transparency and efficiency to the public procurement process. Since its launch in 2016, GeM has recorded procurement of goods and services worth Rs 4,11,808 crores, out of which 52.56 per cent were from MSEs in around 1.5 crore transactions.
The GeM portal has more than 8.74 lakhs registered micro and small enterprises on its platform.
According to the data shared by Anupriya Patel, minister of state in the commerce ministry, in the Lok Sabha on March 29 in a written reply to a question, MSMEs sold goodsworth Rs 422.02 crore in FY17, Rs 5,876.53 crore in FY18, Rs 17,461.61 crore in FY19, Rs 22,916 crore in FY20 and Rs 38,570 crore in FY21.
The top buyer of MSME goods from GeM was the defence ministry in FY23 which nearly doubled its online procurement from the previous fiscal. The ministry made purchases worth Rs 28,732.9 crore in FY23, up by 90.4 per cent from Rs 15,090.8 crore worth of goods and services bought in FY22, according to the data tweeted earlier by GeM.
Also read: Public procurement: Check out latest procedure for sellers to register on GeM portal here
As per the Public Procurement Policy for Micro and Small Enterprises, 25 per cent of the annual procurement made by the Central Ministries/ departments/ public sector enterprises (CPEs) has to be made by the Micro and Small Enterprises. Out of this, four per cent MSEs have to be owned by SCs/STs, and three per cent should be women-owned.
