South Korea's procurement agency will demand bid bonds from suspected paper companies from November 16

Companies that South Korea's Public Procurement Service suspects of existing only on paper will have to post a bid bond before entering its goods tenders from November 16, the agency said Friday. It will flag them from registration and contract records.

The pilot numbers explain the push. Since August the agency has charged bonds on items where indiscriminate bidding was a concern, and the average number of bidders per tender fell from 355 to 57, a drop of 83.9 percent. The average rank of the bidder that ultimately won improved from 41st to 1.5th.

More follows in 2027. Suppliers that register more than 500 secondary product lines will have to file a credit rating certificate, valid for one year, and the number of abandoned post-bid reviews that triggers a bond falls from five to two in January, while the agency plans to bar firms that skip reviews without a valid reason from bidding before the end of this year. This is the fourth package since 2021.