South Korea Targets SME Growth Through Health Procurement

When selling to governments, SMEs often have challenges with matching the buying power and supply chain strength of larger organisations. For the South Korean Central Government, the pandemic has proved an opportunity to support small and medium-sized enterprises, by focusing on opportunities in the health sector through the provision of pandemic related health supplies to international markets.

Face masks and COVID-19 self-tests created by SMEs have signed export deals “worth 13 billion won ($11 million USD), including the United States, Qatar, and Egypt, through the Public Procurement Service’s consultation services designed to help them enter bids with overseas procurement projects,” according to PPS Administrator Kim Chung-woo.

Of the total, nearly 6 billion won of export orders were received from the US public procurement market. The PPS has been working to speed up the entry of local enterprises into overseas markets to promote the country’s anti-epidemic goods and technologies.

We estimated that the global procurement market is worth $13 trillion USD, with South Korea’s market share at 1%.

The Spend Network team are experts in government procurement data and have services and tools to assist businesses to sell to governments internationally. Get in touch to find out more.