2,000 women MSEs benefitted under public procurement in FY21 so far; purchase value nears FY20 level

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Public procurement of goods and services by ministries and central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) from women-owned micro and small enterprises (MSEs) have exceeded the FY19 procurement value and currently nears last financial year’s level, according to the government data available. From procuring goods worth Rs 232.56 crore in FY19, ministries and CPSEs bought goods amounting to Rs 321.74 crore in FY21 so far up – up 38.3 per cent and 82.3 per cent of FY20 procurement value at Rs 390.67, according to the data available on the public procurement from women MSEs on MSME Sambandh portal. The number of women-owned MSEs – 1,980 benefitting in FY21 so far under public procurement also jumped 40 per cent from 1,410 women-MSEs procuring goods in FY19. In FY20, 3,612 MSEs led by women had procured goods from ministries and CPSEs.

In 2018, the government had revised the annual public procurement target for the government organisations and departments from MSEs to 25 per cent from earlier 20 per cent of formers’ total annual purchases. Out of the total target, 3 per cent has to be earmarked for purchases from women-owned MSEs and a sub-target of 4 per cent for procurement from MSEs owned by SC/ST entrepreneurs. While in FY19, procurement from women MSEs was only 0.15 per cent, in FY20 it improved marginally to 0.32 per cent. In FY21 so far, procurement from women MSEs stood at 0.67 per cent.

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The overall MSE procurement as of December 1, 2020, was worth Rs 16,227.23 crore from 80,132 MSEs – 33.58 per cent of Rs 48,330.17 crore worth procurement made by 110 CPSEs. To boost procurement from MSMEs by CPSEs and ministries, the Modi government had started the Government eMarketplace (GeM) portal on August 9, 2016, to speed up the entire procurement process and boost transparency. Goyal also shared the number of startups registered on the GeM portal that grew 70 per cent from 4,297 as of November 1, 2019, to 7,315 as of November 1, 2020. The total number of sellers on GeM was over 8.60 lakh as of December 1, 2020, of which 3,47,172 were MSEs with a 57.59 per cent share in the order value.