Discusses the legal requirements for selling to the host government, including whether the government has agreed to abide by the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or is a party to a government procurement chapter in a U.S. FTA. Specifies areas where there are opportunities
Last Published: 2/18/2019

Iceland is a member of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA).  On the national level, most procurement is the responsibility of the State Procurement Office (Ríkiskaup), an agency of the Icelandic Government.  As an EEA member, Iceland is obligated to follow EU procurement practices, which require that any public procurement in excess of a certain price limit must be tendered for competitive bidding through EU procedures.  Accordingly, qualifying Icelandic tenders are posted in English on the EU’s Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) webpage and are also accessible via the U.S. Mission to the EU’s website. The chief difficulty with the public tender process is that the bid deadline is often very short, which gives prospective U.S. bidders little time to respond, particularly if tender documents need to be translated from Icelandic. Additional material on State tenders can be obtained from Iceland’s State Procurement Office website, but it is not always available in English. Many governments finance public works projects through borrowing from the Multilateral Development Banks. Please refer to the”Project Financing” section in “Trade and Project Financing” for more information.


 

Prepared by our U.S. Embassies abroad. With its network of 108 offices across the United States and in more than 75 countries, the U.S. Commercial Service of the U.S. Department of Commerce utilizes its global presence and international marketing expertise to help U.S. companies sell their products and services worldwide. Locate the U.S. Commercial Service trade specialist in the U.S. nearest you by visiting http://export.gov/usoffices.