What changed on GeM for sellers: caution money and the purchase slabs

The memorandum that moved the purchase slabs

The change a seller feels first did not come from the marketplace. The Department of Expenditure's office memorandum No. F.1/3/2024-PPD of 10 July 2024 substituted the value slabs in Rule 149 of the General Financial Rules, which decide how a government buyer is allowed to buy what is listed on GeM: direct purchase at the bottom, the lowest price among sellers of at least three different manufacturers in the middle, and mandatory bidding or a reverse auction above that. The figure on each line, the automobile exception and the lower floor set for scientific ministries a week later are on selling on GeM.

An update repeats a memorandum this old for one reason: older figures for the same rule are still in circulation, and some of them are on GeM's own site. A GeM news item of 9 June 2021 still reproduces the version of Rule 149 in force then and records that “These rules have been automated on GeM”. The original 2017 text survives in the compilation's own footnotes. Automation is what makes a stale figure expensive: the platform offers the buyer only the route the current rule allows, so a catalogue built around a superseded threshold assumes a purchase the buyer cannot make. When a slab is quoted, the memorandum of 10 July 2024 is the thing to quote with it.

Caution money is gone

GeM used to take a deposit from a seller before it could trade. Its Caution Money from Sellers policy of 2020 set the amount by turnover: ₹5,000 for a seller with turnover below ₹1 crore, ₹10,000 for turnover between ₹1 crore and ₹10 crore, and ₹25,000 above that. Clause 27 of the General Terms and Conditions, headed “Caution Money Deposit”, is still in the agreement a seller trades under.

GeM's seller FAQs answer the question in one line: “The provision was discontinued in 2025.” That is the marketplace's own wording, and it names no day or month, so nothing here fixes a date inside that year. A seller who finds the clause in the terms is reading a document of 21 June 2023.

Transaction charges: the published policy governs

The terms do not set a rate. They say only that “Sellers / Buyers will have to pay Transaction Charge and / or Annual Milestone Charge, wherever applicable, as per extant Revenue Policy of GeM.”Government e Marketplace

So the rate lives in the Revenue Policy, and that document is what a seller is charged under. Figures circulate in press reports, and a report is not the policy: the published policy governs, and it is the document to read for a current figure.

The year the marketplace has had

The Press Information Bureau's release of 6 April 2026 records the platform's cumulative value, the value it transacted in the financial year, and the share of orders executed by micro and small enterprises. Those figures, with their releases named, are on public procurement in official figures.

The point for a seller is not the total but that the volume now sits on the marketplace, which makes an incomplete listing or a lapsed document a commercial problem rather than an administrative one.

Performance security on GeM has not moved

The marketplace sets its own line on performance security: a recommended quantum, a range the buyer may select instead, and a contract value below which it is not required. That line is unchanged in version 1.11 of the terms, of 21 June 2023, and the figures are on selling on GeM.

It is the marketplace's term rather than the rule's; what a tender outside GeM asks for is Rule 171's, and how the four sums differ is on money in a bid.

What has not changed

Registration is still free (“There are no charges or fee for getting registered”), and one account still covers both sides of a business, since “you can register yourself as a product Seller as well as a service provider”.

The pre-requisites document still asks for the authorised person's identity, the business PAN, a bank account and “Income Tax Return Details (ITR Form and ITR acknowledgment) for the last three years”; those verified returns are still “mandatory for participating in Bid/RA for all entities unless incorporated less than 24 months ago or exempted from filing ITR”. The GSTIN on the billing address still decides the order value the account may accept, and that figure is on selling on GeM.

That document carries “Last Updated: 30/12/2019” on its face, so the live version on GeM is the one that binds.

What a seller checks on the dashboard this quarter

This is general information; confirm with the tender document and your adviser.

Nothing above asks a seller for a payment. What it asks for is that the account's own record matches the rules as they now stand: the returns verified, so that a bid is not refused at the last step; the GSTIN on the billing address if orders are to run above the ceiling the pre-requisites name; the catalogue and the delivery periods written against the slabs in force rather than a superseded set; and no caution-money line left in an internal costing for a deposit the marketplace no longer takes.

Where the marketplace sits beside the tender portals is on the portals; the rules behind both are on the rules.