Public Procurement Service: "We Will Build Growth Ladders for Korean Companies to Conquer Overseas Markets"

The Public Procurement Service (PPS) will support promising procurement companies in targeting overseas procurement markets. The aim is to help companies that have grown by leveraging the domestic public market to experience a second growth phase abroad.

On the 9th, PPS announced the “2024 Overseas Procurement Market Entry Support Plan” at the Government Complex Daejeon. It is understood that 8.8 out of 10 domestic procurement companies show willingness to enter overseas markets. The export amount of promising companies (G-PASS) that entered overseas procurement markets last year also recorded a historic high of $1.63 billion, an 8.3% increase compared to the previous year.

The support plan focuses on strengthening strategic support by market based on the voices from procurement companies on the ground and expanding demand-based customized support.

The first task of the support plan is to discover and nurture promising procurement companies through demand analysis of overseas procurement markets such as international organizations, and to strengthen strategic support such as overseas demonstration of innovative products. The core is to segment markets according to export targets and items, enabling procurement market strategies suitable for each company’s export capabilities.

In particular, PPS plans to focus on five major fields where international procurement demand is expected to increase?eco-friendly equipment, disaster and safety, advanced machinery, agricultural and food products, and bio?as well as the procurement market of the US Forces Korea, which will serve as a stepping stone for entry into the Americas region, and provide customized support for each company through the “Overseas Procurement Strategic Company Development Project.”

Efforts will also be made to target the international organization procurement market. This will be done by prioritizing the discovery and reinforcement of G-PASS companies in the pharmaceutical and food and beverage sectors, which have recently rapidly increased their share among top procurement items of international organizations. Additionally, the government plans to expand the budget for the “Innovative Product Overseas Demonstration Project,” where the government first purchases innovative products from domestic companies and provides them to overseas institutions, to 7 billion KRW this year through intergovernmental collaboration. Last year, the budget for this project was 1.2 billion KRW.

PPS will also introduce a new overseas procurement specialized voucher this year. The voucher will function to provide tailored real-demand services to domestic procurement companies before they enter overseas markets and is scheduled to be supported starting in June.

The scale of training specialized personnel to assist procurement companies’ overseas expansion will gradually increase to 680 people this year and 1,400 people next year. In particular, the target for training overseas procurement specialists, which was previously limited to youth and students, will be expanded to include employees currently working at procurement companies.

Furthermore, PPS will strengthen cooperation with international organizations and overseas government agencies so that domestic procurement companies, whose performance and quality have been verified, can increase their chances of overseas expansion with the help of local government agencies. In this context, PPS will hold the largest-ever export consultation meeting inviting overseas buyers this month and a joint export consultation meeting with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and KOTRA in November.

Im Gi-geun, Administrator of PPS, said, “I hope that excellent procurement companies, verified for quality and technology, will turn their eyes to the overseas market worth 2 trillion KRW and create various success stories. PPS will focus its capabilities on supporting domestic companies’ challenges to enter overseas markets by actively utilizing the newly established overseas procurement specialized voucher, overseas procurement specialist training programs, and PPS’s global network.”

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