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15 January 2015

EcoProcura China symposium looks at green public procurement in action

The sustainable public procurement activities of Jiangsu Province, Tianjin City and Yixing City (China) were showcased at the EcoProcura China 2014 symposium, which took place in Beijing in October 2014. The ICLEI co-organised event was attended by around 60 participants, including representatives from national governments, international experts and local government officials, providing a space for exchange on green public procurement (GPP) between Asian and European officials.

Jiangsu Province, which spends 167.69 billion RMB (around €23 billion) annually, has been employing GPP practices since 2008. To date, the City of Tianjin has spent 3.21 billion RMB (around €439 million) on energy-saving equipment alone, and has incorporated the concept of life-cycle costs into its procurement strategy. Yixing has implemented compulsory green purchasing of selected items, and favours energy-saving and environmental-friendly products when possible.

“Compared with developed countries in the West, China had started GPP late, but our progress has been remarkable. The Chinese government is keen to learn from overseas experience to enrich the content of our GPP policies, and to optimise the mechanism, tools and legal framework in implementing and monitoring GPP,” said Ying Wang, Director of the Chinese Government Procurement Management Office in the Ministry of Finance.

For more information, read the symposium report [pdf].