Lim Ki-geun, head of the Public Procurement Service, discusses public procurement cooperation with the president of the Austrian Federal Procurement Agency

 On April 8 (10:00 local time), Lim Ki-geun, the head of the Public Procurement Service, met with Martin S. Ledolter, the president of the Austrian Federal Procurement Service (BBG ^* ), and held a bilateral meeting to discuss cooperation in public procurement. This was the first meeting between the heads of the Public Procurement Service and the Austrian Federal Procurement Service.

  * Bundesbeschaffung GmbH

  The Austrian Federal Procurement Agency is the central procurement agency responsible for approximately 80% of Austria’s total procurement volume and is a public institution supervised by the Federal Ministry of Finance.

  The Austrian delegation attended the OECD-Public Procurement Service Joint International Public Procurement Workshop held in Korea last March, and the two sides confirmed their intention to cooperate on public procurement. This meeting between the heads of the two organizations was held to put this into practice.

  In this bilateral meeting, Lim Ki-geun, the Commissioner of the Public Procurement Service, shared Korea’s recent experience in building a next-generation national market and discussed implementation plans for innovative product public procurement and strategic procurement. Redolter, the President of the Federal Procurement Service, also shared the Austrian Federal Procurement Service’s recent achievements in innovative procurement and strategic procurement and agreed to cooperate with each other. The two sides plan to use this meeting to specify the cooperation items and sign an MOU.

^{In addition, Lim Ki-geun, the head of the Public Procurement Service, proposed Austria’s participation in the ‘Multilateral Meeting on Centralized Procurement (MMGP) *} ’ to solidify Korea’s global leadership in public procurement . The president of the Federal Procurement Agency, Redolder, also responded by proposing Korea’s participation in the network of central procurement agencies of 21 European countries.

 * An abbreviation for Multilateral Meeting on Government Procurement, a public procurement conference led by the Public Procurement Service with participation from six countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, and Chile.

  Lim Ki-geun, head of the Public Procurement Service, said, “The Austrian Federal Procurement Service and the Public Procurement Service have something in common in that they play a very important role in the innovation and strategic use of public procurement through central procurement.”

  “The cooperation between the two organizations will be an important opportunity to advance public procurement to the next level, and Korea and Austria will continue to share innovative procurement systems and advanced e-procurement experiences to proactively lead the advancement of global public procurement administration,” he said.