Public sectoe E-Tendering: Revolutionizing Pakistan’s Public Procurement to Manage Infrastructure on a Large Scale Since 2016, the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has provided significant improvements to procurement processes, allowing digitization and expediting the entire process (Aziz and Khan, 2019; Rajasekar and Kumar, 2020).
The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) and Its Contribution
Government e-Marketplace or GeM is a portal to procure goods and services to be purchased by government departments and public sector organizations. This GeM is a good platform intended for an automated process of procurement and its accessibility for the government bodies and contractors necessary for efficient procurement (Lavanya, 2024).
Few key Advantages of e-Tendering through GeM:
Transparency: All stakeholders have complete visibility into all procurement activities. From the submission of the tenders to the award of the contract, every aspect of the process is recorded in the public domain, which reduces corruption and promotes fairness and transparency in the process (Adam, 2024).
Trekking time: GeM reduces procurement time by automating the entire process, leading to a substantial reduction in the administrative burden and paperwork involved in traditional procurement methods. It enhances and accelerates the handling of offers by a digital stage, which promotes time and lessens blunders (Raza & Hussain, 2017b).
Robust and Impartial: Equal opening is offered to all suppliers in GeM for the opportunities of tender. This healthy competition finally provides the government with value for money and leads to equity in procurement (Shukla and Sharma, 2019). It enables online payments while improving the tracking of goods and services in real-time for monitoring and management of the procurement process. Several mega projects take advantage of the E-Tendering along with the GeM. This trend started showing results in Pakistan as the project observed reduced lead times and effective delivery of equipment and services, resulting in the timely advancement of work (Rajasekar, and Kumar, 2020).
It is expected that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects will receive a huge boost from GeM by enhancing the transparency and efficiency of procurement and enabling collaboration between the two nations. Users can track their procurement activities on their occurrence and ascertain that the members of their project teams don’t stray from timelines and budgets (Aziz and Khan, 2019).
Challenges of E-Tendering:
Technology Gaps: Contractors from rural or remote locations cannot access the internet bandwidth required for using GeM. Industrial processes are increasingly relying on digital platforms, exposing them to possible challenges with data security and bid integrity. Cyber security and risk certainly require good practices to secure the data (Aziz and Khan, 2019; Rajasekar and Kumar, 2020).
