Division of Procurement Services, South Carolina Department of Administration
The Division of Procurement Services at 1333 Main St., Suite 700, Columbia, SC 29201 runs state purchasing, the Office of State Procurement, and the Office of the State Engineer. It maintains the procurement preference rules, supplier registration, and the bidding opportunities listing, but it does not operate a veteran business certification. Division of Procurement Services, South Carolina Department of Administration →
No veteran certification
The state operates no veteran-owned or service-disabled veteran-owned business certification program for procurement.
No veteran preference
The South Carolina Consolidated Procurement Code, Title 11 Chapter 35, contains no veteran preference, set-aside, goal, or tie-breaker.
What does exist
A 7 percent price decrease applies to offers of a South Carolina end product and 2 percent to a United States end product, available to any bidder.
The preference
There is no veteran preference
The South Carolina Consolidated Procurement Code, which governs state purchasing, contains no reference to veterans, veteran-owned businesses, or service-disabled veteran-owned businesses. There is no percentage bid preference, no procurement goal, no set-aside, and no tie-breaker for veteran business owners in state contracting.
- Bills creating a veteran-owned business preference have been introduced in several sessions of the General Assembly; none of them appear in the enacted procurement code.
- Because there is no preference, there is nothing to claim on a bid and no form to file.
Source: South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 11 Chapter 35, Consolidated Procurement Code
The preferences that do exist
When evaluating pricing for an award determination, the procurement officer must decrease by 7 percent the price of any offer for a South Carolina end product, and by 2 percent the price of any offer for a United States end product. The United States preference does not apply to an item that already received the South Carolina preference.
- A South Carolina end product is one made, manufactured, or grown in South Carolina.
- "Made" means to assemble, fabricate, or process component parts into an end product where that work is a substantial portion of the price; "manufactured" means to make or process raw materials into an end product; "grown" covers timber, agricultural produce, livestock, and products harvested from the water.
- The resident vendor preference turns on an office, defined as a nonmobile place of business operated for at least one year before bid opening and staffed at least 50 weeks by at least two employees for at least 35 hours a week each.
- Section 11-35-1524 does not apply to certain alternative source selection methods, including best-value awards under the sections that expressly exclude it.
Finding opportunities
Register and watch the bid listings
Without a certification to pursue, the practical path in South Carolina is ordinary supplier registration and disciplined monitoring of solicitations. The Division of Procurement Services publishes supplier registration, a supplier search, bidding opportunities, awarded solicitations, and statewide term contract searches for supplies, services, and information technology.
- The state is migrating vendor registration to a new system called SCPro; registration and vendor portal availability can change during the transition.
- The Office of State Engineer handles construction, with its own manual, database, and qualification lists.
- Political subdivisions and school districts procure separately and are listed on the division’s site.
Other
Federal certification is still worth holding
Because South Carolina offers nothing at the state level, a South Carolina service-disabled veteran business owner gets the most value from federal certification and from neighboring jurisdictions. An SBA VetCert is the certification that other states and the federal government recognize, and it is free.
- South Carolina’s own preferences are available to any bidder meeting the product-origin or office tests, so pursue those on their own terms.
- Confirm current preference percentages against the code section itself before relying on them in a bid, since the figures sit in statute and can be amended.
Source: S.C. Code § 11-35-1524
What gets reported wrongly about South Carolina
- South Carolina appears on lists of states with veteran business preferences. Those lists are generally picking up introduced bills rather than enacted law. The Consolidated Procurement Code has no veteran provision at all.
- There is no South Carolina veteran-owned business certificate and no state directory of veteran-owned firms for procurement, so any service offering to get you "SC veteran certified" is selling something that does not exist.
- The 7 percent and 2 percent preferences are often described as resident vendor preferences for South Carolina companies. They actually attach to the origin of the end product, not to the ownership of the bidder, and the separate office test has strict staffing and duration requirements.
Every figure on this page links to the source it came from. Verified October 24, 2026. Procurement rules change — check the source before you rely on a number.
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