The Government e-Marketplace (GeM), the online portal through which ministries, public companies and, increasingly, states buy goods and services, turned ten in August. By then it had handled more than Rs 20 lakh crore of purchases across 3.78 crore orders, according to the Commerce Ministry. Figures still quoted in exam-preparation summaries this month, Rs 16.41 lakh crore across 3.27 crore orders, are from an earlier date; the total had already passed Rs 18.4 lakh crore in April.

The headline totals hide two things. Annual purchases seem to have fallen in 2025-26, after rising every year since the portal began. And the government’s procurement targets for small firms, for women-owned firms and for firms owned by Scheduled Castes and Tribes give different answers depending on whether they are measured on GeM or across all central purchases. This follows this blog’s piece on the government’s equity programmes for small firms, which asked the same question of a different tool: what each one actually counts.

Growth stalled in 2025-26

GeM’s purchases rose from under Rs 6,000 crore in 2017-18, its first full financial year, to Rs 5.43 lakh crore in 2024-25, as the government made it the default channel for central purchases. For 2025-26 the ministry said only that purchases were “about” or “over” Rs 5 lakh crore. Its own breakdown pins the figure down: small firms received Rs 2.36 lakh crore, which it said was 47.1% of the total. That makes the total about Rs 5.01 lakh crore, roughly 8% less than the year before.

As a share of the economy, GeM’s purchases went from 0.76% of GDP in 2022-23 to 1.71% in 2024-25 and back to about 1.45% in 2025-26, on MoSPI’s new GDP series. The government’s own factsheet puts public procurement at 20–22% of GDP, so GeM carries perhaps 7–7% of it. Most public buying, including large works contracts and most of what states buy, still goes through other tender portals.

Who buys on GeM

GeM’s volume is concentrated. The coal ministry and its companies alone bought about 30% of everything purchased through the portal in 2024-25, much of it services such as moving coal. A dip in one large buyer’s purchases is enough to move the national total, which may explain 2025-26 better than any change in the portal itself; the ministry has not published the buyer-wise figures that would show it. States are where growth now is.

Small firms: most of the orders, less than half the money

Since 2012 the public procurement policy for micro and small enterprises has required central ministries, departments and public companies to buy at least 25% of what they purchase each year from such firms, including 4% from firms owned by Scheduled Castes and Tribes and 3% from firms owned by women. On GeM, small firms won 68% of orders in 2025-26 but 47.1% of the value, which means their orders were on average less than half the size of others’. Both numbers clear the 25% target with room to spare.

The sub-targets are another matter. On GeM, women-led small firms received over Rs 28,000 crore in 2025-26, about 5.6% of the year’s value, and the ministry reports that as exceeding the 3% target. But the target applies to all central procurement, which the MSME ministry monitors through its Sambandh portal, and there the latest figure found, for 2024-25 up to 28 January 2025, was 2.2% for women-owned firms and 1.3% for firms owned by Scheduled Castes and Tribes, both short of their targets. “Women-led” on GeM and “women-owned” under the policy may not be the same test, and the periods differ, so the two numbers do not contradict each other; they show that the success on the portal has not yet carried over to central purchasing as a whole.

There is also a gap in coverage. Sambandh recorded Rs 1.47 lakh crore of central procurement in the ten months to January 2025, less than a third of what was bought through GeM in the full year, most of it by central buyers. The two count different things, but the gap suggests the targets are checked against only part of what the central government buys.

What would fix this

• GeM should publish annual purchases by buying ministry, public company and state, with the share going to small, women-owned and SC/ST-owned firms for each, so a fall like 2025-26’s can be explained.
• The MSME ministry should reconcile Sambandh with GeM and require every central buyer to report all procurement there, so the 25%, 4% and 3% targets are measured on the full base.
• GeM should report women’s participation using the policy’s definition of a women-owned firm, alongside its own “women-led” count.
• Both portals should report the time taken to pay small sellers, since late payment matters as much to them as winning orders.

These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.

What this piece could not establish

The exact 2025-26 total was not published; the figure here is derived from the ministry’s small-firm numbers and could be off if those were rounded. The 2022-23 and 2023-24 figures are rounded as reported. No buyer-wise breakdown for 2025-26 was found, and statements on the public-sector share of GeM’s value differ by year and source. The Sambandh figures are for part of 2024-25; no full-year figure was found. GeM and government releases were read through news reports and search-engine text, since the official sites could not be opened.

Sources and caveats

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.