Public Procurement Service Gathers Expert Opinions for Next-Generation Nara Market Development

Provided by Public Procurement Service

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Public Procurement Service (PPS) is seeking expert opinions ahead of building the next-generation Nara Market.

On the 21st, the PPS announced that it will hold a 'Digital Procurement Innovation Forum' at the Seoul Regional Procurement Service to gather expert opinions on the construction plan for the next-generation Nara Market.

The forum will bring together 20 experts from various fields including the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, public institutions, universities, and companies to discuss the direction of the next-generation Nara Market and the introduction of intelligent information technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and blockchain.

In particular, participants will focus on sharing opinions about the direction Nara Market should take in response to non-face-to-face and digital transformations due to economic and social structural changes in the post-COVID-19 era.

The PPS plans to continue holding the forum until the completion of the next-generation Nara Market in 2023. It will also convene subcommittees by field as needed to receive advice on technical issues.

Jung Moo-kyung, Administrator of the PPS, said, “Taking COVID-19 as an opportunity, we will redesign the entire procurement process to be digitally friendly so that face-to-face work can be reduced to zero, transforming Nara Market.” He added, “We will also ensure that the next-generation Nara Market project becomes a successful case of the Digital New Deal and a global standard like K-Electronic Procurement.”

Meanwhile, the PPS is pushing for a full-scale overhaul for the first time in 18 years since the introduction of Nara Market in 2002. Although partial improvements and repairs have been made over time, the difference in system usage scale between the time of introduction and the present has caused a surge in failures and speed degradation, raising safety concerns and increasing the need for a full overhaul.

In fact, the transaction scale of Nara Market grew more than threefold from 36.2 trillion won in 2003 to 102.8 trillion won last year. During the same period, the number of registered demand institutions increased from 25,529 to 57,734, registered procurement companies from 92,042 to 434,062, and electronic public notices from about 140,000 to 436,188, making a full system overhaul an unavoidable task, according to the PPS.

A total budget of 132 billion won (based on the preliminary feasibility study) is expected to be invested in building the next-generation Nara Market, with 35.9 billion won in 2021, 47.4 billion won in 2022, and 48.7 billion won in 2023 to be spent respectively.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.