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OECD Support on Public Procurement

What is Public Procurement?

 Public procurement refers to the purchase by governments and state-owned enterprises of goods, services and works. The public procurement process is the sequence of activities starting with the assessment of needs through awards to contract management and final payment. 

As public procurement accounts for a substantial portion of the taxpayers’ money (approximately 12% of GDP and 29% of government expenditure in OECD member countries), governments are expected to carry it out efficiently and with high standards of conduct in order to ensure high quality of service delivery and safeguard the public interest.

Public procurement remains the government activity most vulnerable to waste, fraud and corruption due to the size of the financial flows involved. 

OECD work on Public Procurement

 The OECD supports governments in reforming their public procurement systems to ensure long-term sustainable and inclusive growth as well trust in government, including by:

  • Providing international standards on public procurement
  • Undertaking hands-on peer reviews that assess public procurement systems and provide proposals for improvements
  • Bringing together several communities of practice on procurement to shape directions for future reforms
  • Collecting useful and reliable evidence across OECD countries and beyond on the performance of public procurement operations as well as the impact of procurement on broader public policy objectives
  • Developing frameworks and indicators to assess public procurement systems, such as the Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems