Digital India is the government’s flagship programme to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
Government-e-Marketplace (GeM) is an initiative under the “Digital India” drive which helps in the process of public procurement by government departments and their autonomous bodies. All government organisations have to buy all office related equipment including stationery, IT Products, IT consumables via the GeM portal.
According to an article on newsd.in “the [GeM] platform is being manipulated by the OEM”, now the portal has two separate classifications for printer consumables of “OEM Cartridges/consumable” and “Compatibles”. The article alleges that the OEMs “extract unrealistic and unjustified prices from the government”.
The article says: “The alarming factor is that OEM toners are readily available in open market at much lower prices than the prices registered on GeM portal. When we checked it with dealers in Nehru Place, Bhikaji Cama Place and Chawri Bazar we found the price gap to be up to 40% on the MRP.”
The article does point out though that the GeM has started to “to check unreasonable pricing behaviour”, however no action has been taken yet, which means the government departments continue to be allegedly overcharged.
