The Minister of Railways on Saturday decided to integrate the Indian Railway e-procurement system (IREPS) with the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) to use the latter in its full potential.
After the integration, GeM is intended to move further in the direction of becoming a single-point public procurement portal for all agencies of Government of India, according to a press statement from the Railways Ministry.
The decision was taken during a meeting of Minister of Railways, Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal with the members of Railway Board. The main agenda of the meeting was to review the steps to promote 'Make in India' products in the procurement process of Indian Railways as well as the Government of India.
Goyal, during the meeting, emphasised the need to procure good and services of approximately Rs 70,000 crores on GeM platform for Railways, to open up the market at remote places and especially MSMEs.
During the meeting, Goyal urged the members to "take measures to generate confidence in the industry about Indian Railways having a corruption-free and transparent procurement environment." He also reviewed the steps to promote 'Make in India' products in the procurement process for Railways.
Goel also laid emphasis on increasing the participation of local vendors in the procurement process. It was also decided that local content clause in the procurement should be made such that Railways would get more bids from local vendors/suppliers.
It was noted that this decision would give a boost to mission Atmrbhar Bharat. Active support of DPIIT was also sought to make suitable policy revisions, if required, to facilitate the efforts of Indian Railways in the direction of self-reliant India.
( With inputs from ANI )