Government E-Marketplace (GEM) in India: A Descriptive Analysis.

India spends approximately 20% of GDP on public procurement, which was struggling with the challenges of decentralized procurement of commonly used items for quite a long time. While purchases in small quantities lose the benefits of economies of scale, they are also vulnerable to malpractices and lack of transparency because it is very difficult to monitor thousands of small transactions. Small suppliers, too, find it difficult to reach buyers in other parts of the country without layers of intermediaries, pushing up their costs. There are many issues in engaging the public procurement system in India as well as all over the world. To address this issues and challenges, the Government has initiated and launched e-Marketplace (GeM) during 2016, from which any central government office or department shall directly purchase the common use goods and services required by the office using this online portal.