Onboarding co-operatives on the GeM portal for purchase on Tuesday at a function in New Delhi, Union Minister Amit Shah exhorted them to get ready for becoming sellers also at GeM. There is a huge potential at GeM for co-ops and they must scale up production and quality to qualify for the same, said Shah while requesting Piyush Goyal, Commerce Minister to help co-ops on the supply side.
Listing the contributions of co-ops in the production of wheat, dairy, dalhan, sugar, fertilizers etc, the Minister said the Army alone buys huge quantities of wheat, spices, dalhan and many other items from GeM. Usually, ITC supplies these items to GeM but why cannot co-operatives do the same; after all ITC must be getting it from you only, said Shah while underlining the role of NCUI in expanding the marketing capacity of co-ops.
The minister also lauded co-ops for showing unprecedented enthusiasm in joining GeM and said that big co-op brands like Amul, IFFCO, Kribhco and Nafed have already got on the bandwagon. He said that 45 of the 54 multistate cooperatives have joined, which is a huge achievement. He also informed that from among 589 state co-op bodies, 289 have registered themselves.
Shah said that in the first phase co-ops having a turnover of Rs 100 crores have been onboarded but in the next phase co-ops having a turnover of Rs 50 crores would be invited. “We have to take it to a level where even PACS are onboarded and they also buy stuff from GeM leading to an unprecedented transparency in co-operative purchases”, stated Shah.
Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for conceptualizing a brilliant idea like GeM, Shah congratulated Piyush Goyal for effective handling and said five years hence, GeM would be a unique entity at the global level.
GeM sells more than 10,000 products and more than 288 services have been listed. Till now business worth Rs. 2.78 lakh thousand crore has also been completed which is a tremendous achievement of the GeM, said Shah.
The onboarding event was jointly organized by the Ministry of Cooperation, NCUI and GeM. It was also attended by Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, MoS B.L.Verma, NCUI President Dilip Sanghani, among others. Audience had many top guns of the co-op sector including IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi, Amul MD R S Sodhi, Kribhco MD Rajan Chawdhary, Nafed Chairman and MD, NCDC MD, to name only a few. The event was also watched by co-op bodies including PACS across states in virtual mode.
Speaking on the occasion Amit Shah said under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ministry of Cooperation has taken many measures for cooperatives and in the last one year, the Ministry is constantly working on 25 to 30 initiatives, he added. Shah said the Cooperative policy is also being prepared with a holistic approach from PACS to APEX, the government has to expand cooperatives, but there is a lack of a database, therefore the ministry is also creating a national level database of different categories of cooperatives.
“A population of 60 crore spent their time worrying about their meals and other daily necessities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has awakened the aspirations of this population of 60 crore by fulfilling their primary needs, by opening bank accounts, providing gas cylinders, toilets, electricity, pure drinking water and free food grains, and cooperatives have the potential to fulfil these aspirations”, underlined Shah.
An export house is also being registered, for which the process will be completed by December, it will be a platform for export of products by cooperatives. The cooperative sector will not be given second class treatment, however those in the sector will also have to initiate change and bring in transparency, Shah stressed. He also said that Co-op University is also in the pipeline.
