Financial Ministry and Internal Affairs Ministry announced on January 24 the range of construction works, designing and consulting service that World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurement is applied to in fiscal 2014 and 2015. The agreement will cover construction works valued at more than 600 million yen when procured by the central government and more than 2.02 billion yen by prefectures and ordinance-designated cities. The government’s design works and consulting services of 60 million yen or more will be subject to the rule and 200 million yen is the lower limit for the municipalities. The works and services are to be procured by competitive biddings or proposal-based open selection, which are open to overseas-based companies. The limits will be raised from the earlier period according to the recent trend of depreciating Yen. (2014/01/27)