SME Times News Bureau | 17 Oct, 2018
A six-week long National Mission Series concluded
with a workshop on Health on GeM in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The workshop was organized by Government
eMarketplace (GeM), in partnership with Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to
sensitise potential vendors, suppliers and buyers from various parts of the
country and different government agencies on the proven benefits of GeM and
encourage them to procure more using this platform.
Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,
Preeti Sudan, in her inaugural address, urged GeM to further expand their
products and services to cater to a larger set of buyers.
She said that GeM isa platformwhere government
has matched technology with transparency and the need for procurement from the
government’s point of view along with all the stakeholders in the business.
She said that 400
products have been identified which are commonly consumed and the listhas been
given to Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to set out standards for them, so
that there is no scope for discretion and buyers and suppliers know what they
have to adhere to it.
Secretary, Commerce,.
Anup Wadhawan, said that procurement has been a very critical and sensitive
subject in Government, notwithstanding the volume of rules, regulations,
procedures, cross checks, safeguards and the various precautions taken by
government officials.
He said that GeM offers
the way forward to overcome all these pitfalls and it is a transparent platform
with the possibility of procurement with some accountability for both vendor
and procurer.
Speaking on the occasion,CEO,
GeM, Radha Chauhan,said that it is a great opportunity for GeM to have such a
platform to openly interface, interact and deliberate on health.
Presently, GeM records close to 15000
transactions for healthcare products which is about Rs 220 crore worth of
business and there is a tremendous scope for this business to flourish through
GeM over the next few months.