Mangaluru: A vendor’s meet was organized in Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) at MRPL Employees Recreation Centre, as a part of the Vigilance Awareness Week. More than 500 vendors participated in the meet.

Speaking on the occasion, K Upendra Rao, DGM vigilance, briefed on the transparency in the tendering process. He also highlighted on the GeM-Government e-Market place, and how the vendors could be benefitted by the site.

T Ramakrishna, GGM, maintenance, MRPL, spoke and briefed on the initiatives, developments and emerging trends in public procurement. He appealed to the vendors to render timely supply of goods and services and MRPL will reciprocate positively, he assured.

Later presentations on various topics were organized for the benefit of the vendors.

• Venugopal VJ, chief manager (Materials), gave a presentation on the emerging trends in Public Procurement and also explained on E-Tendering, On-line Vendor Registration and Vendor Bill tracking System.
• Madhusudhan Goud from Axis Bank, gave a presentation on TReDS (Trade Receivables & Discounting System), a new concept by RBI to facilitate financing of Trade Receivables of MSMEs from multiple financiers through online bidding process.
• Nanda Gopal Shenoy, chartered accountant, presented on ‘Goods & Service Tax – A way ahead’.
• Socrates, deputy director - MSME explained the benefits available for MSME vendors.
• Munish Sharma, assistant manager-NSIC, briefed on how NSIC (National Small Industries Corporation) is helpful for the small budding industries.

A very useful interactive session followed in which many vendors raised various queries and concerns. Pankaj Agarwal, GGM (Materials) and V N S Venkatramana, CGM (Materials) and B Ramesh Kumar, CGM (Admn-Contract) answered the various queries related to procurement and tendering. The vendors meet was organized by MRPL Materials department.