Cooperatives on GeM portal

In News

• Over 300 cooperatives have been onboarded as buyers on the GeM portal to enable them to purchase goods and services at competitive prices.
  • In the first phase, all eligible cooperatives with a turnover and deposits of ?100 crore will be able to start placing orders on the GeM portal.

Why this move?

• It will provide a huge platform to sell  cooperative products to a large pool of government buyers.
• The GeM portal will be very useful in bringing in transparency in the cooperative sector and when there is transparency, the trust of farmers and milk producers will also increase on the committees and their members.
• Until now, cooperatives were purchasing goods and services from the open market.

About

• GeM:
  • It is a one-stop National Public Procurement Portal to facilitate online procurement of common use Goods & Services required by various Central and State Government Departments / Organisations /Public Sector Undertakings ( PSUs).
  • It is a 100 percent government owned Section 8 company set up under the aegis of Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry for procurement of goods and services by Central and state government organisations.
• Cooperatives:
  • It is a voluntary association of individuals having common needs who join hands for the achievement of common economic interest. 
  • Its aim is to serve the interest of the poorer sections of society through the principle of self-help and mutual help.
  • The word “cooperatives” was added after “unions and associations” in Article 19(1)(c) under Part III of the Constitution. This enables all the citizens to form cooperatives by giving it the status of fundamental right of citizens.
  • A new Article 43B was added in the Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV) regarding the “promotion of cooperative societies”.
  • The 97th Act 2011 added a new part PartIXB regarding cooperative working in India.
  • Part IX B of the Constitution, inter alia, seeks to empower the Parliament in respect of multi-State co-operative societies and the State Legislatures in case of other co-operative societies to make appropriate law, laying down the following matters, namely:-
    • provisions for incorporation, regulation arid winding up of co-operative societies based on the principles of democratic member-control, member-economic participation and autonomous functioning.
  • A separate ‘Ministry of Co-operation’ has been created by the Central Government for realizing the vision of ‘Sahkar se Samriddhi’.

Source: HT