Gyeonggi Province: "Single-Bid Contracts with Same Company Limited to 3 Times Per Year"

[Suwon Ilbo=Park No-hun Reporter] With Governor Lee Jae-myung of Gyeonggi Province directing the establishment of preventive measures against fraud in contract procurement, Gyeonggi Province has prepared improvements to contract procurement operations including the operation of a Contract Review Committee and limitation of single-bid contracts with the same company to 3 times per year, with implementation beginning next month.

These are measures to strengthen fairness and transparency in contract procurement and improve trust in contract administration.

According to Gyeonggi Province on the 14th, the contract procurement operation improvement plan includes ▲establishment of guidelines (manuals) including operation of the Contract Review Committee ▲improvement of general account contract procedures ▲improvement of fund procedures ▲enhancement of contract management staff expertise and others.

First, the province plans to form a 'Contract Review Committee' to conduct review before requesting single-bid contracts, and is preparing approximately 50 external committee member candidates to be operated at each department and bureau level.

The review committee will conduct preliminary review of companies within Gyeonggi Province (confirmation of registration in the National Procurement Service), qualification fulfillment for project execution, and grounds for exclusion from contracts to determine the appropriateness of single-bid contracts.

Along with this, the province has improved general account contract procurement procedures by expanding the multi-bid quotation threshold from the original 20 million won and above to 10 million won and above, and reduced the single-bid quotation threshold from 20 million won and below to 10 million won and below.

In particular, single-bid contracts with the same company have been limited to 3 times per year.

Accordingly, from the 1st of next month, department officials seeking to promote projects through single-bid contracts must prepare a contract procurement checklist by confirming through the 'Contract Status' posted on the bulletin board within Gyeonggi Province's administrative computer network whether the target company's single-bid contract count over the past year exceeds 3 times, and request preliminary review from the 'Contract Review Committee' at their respective department and bureau.

In addition, the province plans to consolidate fund-related contract work processing in the accounting department and conduct regular education for contract management staff.

The province expects that the implementation of this improvement plan will reduce unnecessary misunderstandings of 'concentrated work allocation' by selecting and designating certain companies, and believes it can implement transparent and clean contract administration to improve public trust in provincial administration.

Previously, on October 29 of last year, Governor Lee Jae-myung mentioned at an expanded executive conference, "Regarding contract procurement, let's review a horizontal review system so that approval authorities cannot arbitrarily conduct contract procurement," and stated, "Each department and bureau should think together about ways to prevent fraud and temptation that could arise in contract matters."

Meanwhile, Gyeonggi Province concluded 5,780 contract procurement agreements during 2020, with 4,904 single-bid contracts and 876 multi-bid contracts.