Public Procurement Service "Crackdown on Unfair Practices Including Origin Violations in the Public Market"

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Public Procurement Service (PPS) is cracking down on origin violations of textile products traded in the public procurement market.

On the 17th, the PPS announced that it will strictly crack down on acts of falsely labeling imported textile products such as hats and gloves supplied to public institutions as domestically produced.

To this end, the PPS plans to continuously monitor whether procurement companies directly produce the products at each stage of contract fulfillment.

First, at the bidding stage, the minimum technical personnel standards by procurement scale, currently applied only to textile products, will be strengthened to verify direct production of hats and gloves, which were previously not included in the target items.

Next, at the contract fulfillment stage, items with frequent cases of unfair practices such as origin violations will be designated, and unannounced production site inspections will be conducted more than twice during the contract period.

At the final stage of delivery, the PPS emphasized that inspections and acceptance of textile product contracts will be strengthened by checking for the attachment of origin labels and conducting finished product inspections.

Crackdowns on origin violations will also be conducted in collaboration with related agencies. For example, if the Korea Customs Service filters imported textile products suspected to be supplied to public institutions during import and customs clearance stages and notifies the PPS, the PPS will regularly impose sanctions such as designating the offending procurement companies as dishonest suppliers, expelling them from the public procurement market, and recovering unfair profits.

Previously, the PPS, in cooperation with the Korea Customs Service last year, detected a procurement company that disguised Chinese-made police hats and Indonesian-made army cold-weather gloves as domestically produced. Currently, the detected company is undergoing expulsion from the public market and recovery of unfair profits.

Kang Shin-myeon, Director of the Purchasing Business Bureau at the PPS, stated, “We plan to crack down on unfair procurement practices that cause significant social impact or financial damage and impose sanctions such as designating detected companies as dishonest suppliers.” He emphasized, “In addition, detected companies will face disadvantages such as recovery of unfair profits to the national treasury and public disclosure of the detection details.”

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