Government of Maharashtra's Government e-Procurement System of NIC

The Problem: Procurement of works, goods and services is a major area of expenditure for any government. The volume of procurement generated is worth several crores per annum, through procurement contracts by several departments of Government of Maharashtra such as Public Works Department (PWD), Water Resource Department (WRD), Public Health Engineering (PHE) as also through the rate contracts and quantity contracts concluded by the Government.

The Solution: GePNIC is a central public procurement portal for all central govt. ministries and departments, driven by the Department of Expenditure. GePNIC is a generic solution that can easily be adopted for works, goods and services. The complete bid cycle, from issuing tenders till the award of contract, can be handled in this system. A separate instance for Maharashtra has been set up as mahatenders.gov.in. The application uses digital signatures for authentication.

The Result: The government of Maharashtra is in the third position in issuing tenders from the GePNIC portal. Departments are able to save hundreds of crores of rupees by bringing open competitiveness in the bid process and getting best quotations from bidders. This process has also reduced the operational costs involved in the manual tender process. Using this system, anyone can download bid documents without any restriction and bidders can submit bids without any fees.