Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday launched the onboarding of cooperatives on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal.
The move will allow cooperatives to make purchases through the GeM portal like other government buyers- central and state ministries, departments, public sector enterprises, autonomous institutions and local bodies.
This comes days after the Union Cabinet on June 1 gave its approval for the extension of GeM’s mandate to allow purchases by cooperatives as buyers on GeM. Till now only government buyers could buy through the GeM portal, and private sector buyers were not allowed to do so.
Addressing the gathering, Shah said that August 9 is a very important day in Indian history as Mahatma Gandhi started the Quit India Movement on this day in 1942. Another important work is being done today as the cooperatives have been given access to GeM. in the country, Shah said.
The Home Minister said that the cooperative sector has immense potential and the GeM portal will be a very useful platform for its expansion. Shah asked the cooperatives to register themselves as suppliers on the GeM portal.
Shah said that most of the government departments make purchases through GeM, so cooperatives should also start preparing for registration for supply on GeM to increase their market. He appealed to the National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) to expand the marketing of cooperatives and for this, there can be no better way than GeM.
Shah said the cooperative sector is being neglected since independence, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi is accelerating its expansion with historic reforms and modernization. He listed the measures taken by the Modi government to expand the cooperative sector and said that his ministry is “continuously” working on 25 to 30 initiatives.
According to the statement issued by the Ministry of Cooperation, Shah said that the government has to expand the cooperative societies but the database is not there, so the ministry is also creating a national-level database of different categories of cooperatives.
Shah said that an export house is also being registered and the work will be completed by December this year. “It will provide a platform for exports from cooperatives across the country,” the statement said.
He said that radical changes are also being made in the Multi-State Co-operative Act and the government has also decided to computerize all the PACS (Primary Agricultural Credit Societies) as per the statement.
