A national outreach Programme, GeM Samvaad, was launched on 17th December 2019 to reach out to stakeholders across the country and also local sellers and buyers, said am official release on Tuesday.

The outreach programme began from 19th December 2019 and during the launch week the States of Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are being covered. The outreach programme will be on till 17th February 2020 and will cover all the States and UTs.

GeM senior officers including CEO are steering the programs. They are also interacting with Buyers and Sellers attending the events. Arrangements for the outreach programmes including logistics are made by the respective State Governments.

The target is to reach out to all stakeholders and learn from their experiences on their usage of GeM portal. Through this outreach programme, GeM expects to make the actual users aware about the new features and functionalities of the portal and collect feedback, which is the first step towards GeM’s ‘Voice of Customer’ initiative.

State Departments and Organizations and Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) have been using GeM for their buying needs. Sellers from the States are also benefitting through the access to national Public Procurement market using the portal.

Through GeM Samvaad the marketplace is looking forward to receiving feedback from users which shall be used for making improvements and advancements in the system.

GeM has more than 15 lakh products and around 20,000 services, more than 3 lakh registered sellers and service providers and more than 40,000 Government buyer organizations.

In its short journey of three years, GeM has processed more than 28 lakh orders worth Rs. 40,000 crores in Gross Merchandise Value out of which 50% has been transacted by MSMEs.