Piyush Goyal reviews steps to promote 'Make in India' products in procurement process for Railways, govt

Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal on Saturday reviewed the steps to promote 'Make in India' products in the procurement process for the Railways and the Union government.

"Minister of Railways and Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal reviewed the steps to promote Make in India products in the procurement process of Indian Railways as well as Government of India. During the meeting, Piyush Goyal urged to take measures to generate confidence in industry of corruption-free and transparent procurement environment on Indian Railways," according to a press statement from the Ministry of Railways.

"While reviewing the steps to promote Make in India products in procurement process, it was emphasised to increase the participation of local vendors in procurement process. It was also decided to that local content clause in the procurement should be such that we may get more bids from local vendors/suppliers. This would also give a boost to mission Atma Nirbhar Bharat. Active support of DPIIT was sought to make suitable policy revisions, if required, to facilitate the efforts of Indian Railways in this direction," the press statement read.

It was felt that encouragement needs to be given to such vendors who can supply higher locally manufactured content. It was also suggested to create a FAQ section and a helpline number so that vendors may get clarity on various issues relating to procurement process, the statement added.

A detailed presentation was made by the member (Materials Management), Railway Board on enhancing 'Make in India' and steps being taken to procure through GeM along with the progress made.

The review meeting was also attended by Minister of State of Railways Suresh C Angadi, Railway Board Members, CEO/GeM and representatives of DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce.

The Railway Ministry said, a need for devising strategies for further increasing the participation of Indian service providers and component manufacturers was felt. Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is a highly innovative idea in public procurement, across the globe.

Goyal emphasised the need to do Railways goods and services procurements of approximately Rs 70,000 crore on GeM platform to open up the market to the industry even at remote places and specially MSMEs.

The statement further read, "Indian Railways, one of the largest procurement agencies of the Government of India, is integrating its procurement systems with GeM to use GeM's full potential. The department shared the timelines for the integration of Indian Railway e-Procurement system with GeM."

Railway emphasised the need to have a seamless integration of the two systems eliminating the need for any manual interface. Strength of both the systems i.e. Railways IREPS and GeM should be productively leveraged to generate synergy to take the Railways procurement to GeM's full potential. Post integration GeM is intended to move further in the direction of becoming a single point public procurement portal for all agencies of Government of India.

During the meeting, ways and means to create a corruption-free public procurement environment in India were discussed in which the Ministry of Railways, DPIIT and GeM have extremely important roles to play. The need for engagement of industry for developing more indigenous vendors to participate in the growth journey of the Indian Railways was emphasised in the deliberations.

During the presentation, it was decided that the Railways would work more towards having a user-friendly, single-step vendor, web-based interface for all its activities. The website should transparently, provide every interested vendor with a clear idea of how to do business with the Indian Railways. The website should have all relevant information to generate confidence in a corruption-free and transparent environment on Indian Railways.

( With inputs from ANI )