The Public Procurement Service (PPS) will execute procurement contracts worth 34.5 trillion won in the first half of this year. It also plans to focus on swiftly implementing procurement policies that can be tangibly felt on the ground, such as reorganizing the support system for innovative products.
Im Gi-geun, Administrator of the Public Procurement Service (second from the left), is presenting the '2025 Work Plan' at the Government Daejeon Complex on the 20th. Photo by Public Procurement Service
The PPS finalized and announced the "2025 PPS Work Plan" on the 20th, which includes these details. The work plan sets three main strategies: ▲ prioritizing the livelihood economy and fostering a growth ecosystem ▲ building trustworthy public procurement based on solid fundamentals ▲ proactively responding to economic and social structural changes.
First, the PPS aims to sign procurement contracts worth a record-high 34.5 trillion won in the first half of this year. To achieve this, it plans to reduce procurement fees for demand agencies by up to 20% and announce the procurement plans for goods, services, and facility construction early this month.
The procurement fee reduction rate will be raised from 15% in January-April last year to 20% for the same period this year, and from 5% in May-June last year to 10% this year. Additionally, the emergency bidding announcement period will be shortened from 7 days to 5 days, and the design adequacy review for small-scale defense projects under 20 billion won will be exempted, thereby shortening and simplifying procurement procedures to avoid hindering prompt execution.
The PPS will discover and contract advanced convergence products not previously available in the procurement market, such as companion robots, and support companies' entry into the public procurement market by proactively establishing product names in new growth sectors.
In particular, the PPS plans to promote pilot purchases of innovative products through leasing this year, facilitating trial use of products in new industry sectors such as expensive experimental equipment. The leasing method for innovative products will be newly introduced this year.
One of the major tasks the PPS will pursue this year is to lay a growth ladder in public procurement so that promising domestic procurement companies verified in Korea can expand into the global market. To this end, the scale of overseas demonstration for innovative products will be increased from 7 billion won last year to 14 billion won this year, and the "Innovative Products Export Promotion Package" will be applied on-site by combining support for overseas demonstration incidental costs and PPS-led ODA projects.
To ensure trustworthy public procurement, the PPS will strictly respond to illegal activities by diversifying sanctions and strengthen disadvantages for unfair practices that undermine public procurement order, such as collusion. It will also spread a culture of fair evaluation by advancing the "Triple Management System for Evaluation Committee Members" introduced last year and introducing new evaluation techniques such as reverse evaluation, multi-faceted evaluation, and discussions among committee members.
The PPS will also employ a strategy to proactively respond to changing economic and social structures such as low birth rates, carbon neutrality, and social responsibility by utilizing public purchasing power. To enhance the role of public procurement in overcoming low birth rates, the PPS will introduce bidding score bonuses for low birth rate response, expand the scope of application and total scoring to preferentially treat childbirth-friendly companies in bidding. It will strengthen minimum green standards, expand the range of applicable products, and prepare facility design review criteria that can induce carbon emission reductions such as the use of low-carbon materials.
To realize social responsibility, the PPS plans to expand market access support by easing procurement market entry requirements for vulnerable companies such as those run by persons with disabilities and increasing the priority purchase amount for joint production products by small business owners from 1 billion won to 2 billion won.
Im Gi-geun, Administrator of the PPS, said, "This year, with greater internal and external uncertainties than ever, the responsibility and role of public procurement worth 200 trillion won annually are enormous. The PPS will solidify the Season 2 strategy of being a 'friend to small, venture, and innovative companies' and 'Back to the basic,' and make every effort to proactively respond to economic and social structural changes such as low birth rates, carbon neutrality, and social responsibility."
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