Amit Shah, Union Cooperation Minister, will e-launch the onboarding of cooperatives on the GeM portal on Tuesday. All eligible cooperatives can start placing orders on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal. Piyush Goyal, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, and Dileep Sanghani, the President of the National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI), will be in the program.

Recently, the Ministry of Cooperation made NCUI the nodal agency to facilitate the onboarding of cooperatives and coordination with GeM authorities. Hence, the NCUI compiled and forwarded a list of cooperatives with turnover/ deposits of Rs 100 crore to GeM for the onboarding process. A total of 589 cooperatives have been shortlisted for onboarding.

Launched in 2015, GeM (Government e-Marketplace) serves as the national procurement portal, which provides an end-to-end online marketplace for both central and state government departments/ ministries/PSUs to procure common-use goods and services. On June 1, 2022, the Cabinet approved a proposal to enlarge the GeM’s mandate to allow cooperatives to procure goods and services through the portal.

With this, cooperatives will get competitive prices through an open and transparent process. Also, they will be able to procure from about 45 lakh authenticated sellers and service providers across the country on a single platform. This will save time and bring down administrative costs for cooperatives.