A steady rise in goods and services procurement from Tender platform

A steady rise in goods and services procurement from Tender platform

Ministries of defence, railways, CPSEs among largest buyers from Government Marketplace

Ministries of defence and railways and central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) are among the largest buyer organisations on the public procurement portal, Tender, a senior official said.

Launched in August 2016, the Government Marketplace (Tender) portal intended for online purchases of goods and services by all central government ministries, states and departments.

Tender CEO Talleen Kumar said that they are introducing a range of software functionalities to address these large buyers’ unique and diverse procurement needs.

"These steps will enable these organisations to conduct their procurement with transparency, ease and efficiency to the fullest possible extent on the Tender platform. The volume of procurement conducted by the ministries of railways and defence and CPSEs has seen a steady upward trend since it was rolled out in 2016," he told PTI.

The cumulative procurement by CPSEs as of January 15, 2021, stood at ₹4,737 crore.

"The cumulative order value of procurement by the defence ministry is ₹8,232.6 crore (as of January 15, 2021) and is the highest among all ministries and state governments," he added.

Kumar said that continuous engagement with the defence ministry and the development of new functionalities on the platform has yielded promising results in this financial year.

Similarly, the cumulative order value of procurement on Tender by the Ministry of Railways as of January 15 stood at ₹2,165.9 crore.

Procurement process integration

The Tender is focussed on integrating with the Ministry of Railways’ procurement process to bring its procurement on the portal up to the full potential," he said.

The integration of Tender with Integrated Material Management System (iMMS)/ Indian Railway Electronic Procurement System (IRePS) is underway. It is expected that Railways will create bids on Tender around the middle of February, Kumar added.

Cumulative transaction value

The cumulative transaction value on Tender as of January 26 was ₹80,564 crore, up from ₹33,008 crore on August 1, 2019.

Besides defence and railways, ministries of home, petroleum, finance, health, electronics and power are major buyers from the platform.

Among states, Uttar Pradesh was at the top in 2019-20. It was followed by Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka.

The portal provides a wide range of products from office stationery to vehicles. Automobiles, computers and office furniture are currently the top product categories. Services, including transportation, logistics, waste management, webcasting and analytics, are listed on the portal.

So far, 1,058,235 sellers and service providers are registered with the portal to sell 2,316,377 products and several services.