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's 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

Events and Reports

• • • EC-OECD Conference on strategic public procurement: Procuring sustainable, innovative, and socially responsible solutions - Paris, France02 June 2017
      • High Level Meeting on the revision of the Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS)08-09 November 2016
      • Forum on Procurement for Innovation05 October 2016
      • Corruption in Public Procurement - Brochure04 May 2016
      • High-Level Principles for Integrity, Transparency and Effective Control of Major Events and Related Infrastructures29 February 2016
      • • Going Green: Best Practices for Public ProcurementFebruary 2016
  • Recommendation of the Council on Public ProcurementApril 2015
    
  • Public procurement in Greece1 September 2014 

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2015 OECD Recommendation on Public Procurement

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Communities of practice on public procurement 

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Emerging good practices and tools on public procurement