The Ministry of SMEs and Startups said on the 29th it will shift about 100 million pieces of general mail within the "mailing service" that some public institutions have handled in-house to a restricted-competition bidding process limited to small and midsize businesses.
This move follows an instruction at the president's work report in Dec. last year to correct the practice of public institutions directly carrying out or awarding by private contract to their subsidiaries the mailing service, which is a product designated for competition among small businesses.
Under the Act on Facilitation of Purchase of Small and Medium Enterprise-Manufactured Products and Support for Their Market, when public institutions purchase products designated for competition among small businesses, they must procure them through competitive bidding unless there is a special reason. However, some institutions have used their own facilities to handle large volumes directly.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) conducted a one-month fact-finding survey starting in Dec. last year on four institutions: the National Tax Service, Korea Post, Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), and the National Health Insurance Service. The survey found these institutions were processing about 260 million pieces of mail through their own facilities without competitive bidding.
Of these, about 160 million pieces of sensitive information, such as crime, health, and tax information, will be exceptionally allowed to be handled directly in light of security needs.
The remaining approximately 96.73 million pieces of general mail will be phased into competitive bidding limited to small businesses.
By institution, Korea Post plans, after consultation with the sending agencies, to gradually shift 850,000 pieces of relatively less sensitive mail—such as local government welfare registered mail and notices related to real estate registration—to outsourcing by small businesses.
The National Tax Service will push forward an outsourcing project to small businesses for 570,000 pieces of general informational mail that do not include tax information after next year's budget is secured.
Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) will run a pilot project starting in the second half for about 63.25 million pieces excluding sensitive information, then gradually shift to competitive contracting.
The National Health Insurance Service plans to sequentially shift about 32.05 million pieces of general mail starting next year in line with the expiration of existing general service contracts.
Park Yong-sun, director general for small and medium enterprise policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS), said, "We applied the principle of competitive bidding to the mailing service that public institutions had been performing directly."