MAIT focusing on public procurement in India

Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT), in association with the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D), Ministry of Commerce, has organized a one-day seminar for industry bodies to focus on the key issues and challenges concerned with the public procurement process. MAIT adjures the government to include ERV for all DGS&D contracts and also to work on the guidelines of the rate contracts for cloud and managed services.

Sathya Narayan Mohanthy, director general, DGS&D, said, "To bring in improvement in the system, we, at DGS&D, are trying to bring new schemes like deemed registration and tatkal scheme. Essentially, we are welcoming more firms to the DGS&D system to register and do their business. We require a large number of bids cutting across geographies."

J. V. Ramamurthy, president, MAIT, said, "It is important to include the exchange rate variation clause in the procurement contracts. Above all, there is a need to bring in operational excellence in the process which would benefit the companies, as well as the respective departments. The multistep payment process, with a long cycle time, can also be made electronic."

The MAIT event was organized to create a platform for key stakeholders from the government and industry captains from the top digital economy companies of India to interact on policy mechanisms that can strengthen India's public procurement process.

This event was the first of its kind wherein the central procurement wing of the Ministry of Commerce, DGS&D, has formally partnered with an industry association to understand and strengthen the mechanisms for creating and enabling an environment for public procurement in India.