In most countries, the central government is the largest buyer of goods and services of all kinds. Globally, the value of this market is estimated at more than $2.4 trillion. In reality, much of this market would generally be closed to U.S. suppliers if countries that are not party to the GPA can enforce non-transparent procurement policies that effectively close the market for foreign suppliers. Supply agreements such as the GPA open up these markets and create a level playing field where U.S. suppliers can compete effectively with foreign suppliers. If a supplier considers that there has been a breach of this Agreement, it will be asked to enter into consultations with the procuring entity in order to resolve the problem. If these consultations do not lead to a satisfactory outcome, each signatory Government is required to provide non-discriminatory, timely, transparent and effective procedures that would allow suppliers to challenge alleged violations of the Convention. Suppliers may be asked to initiate a challenge procedure within a certain period of time (at least 10 days) from the date on which the basis of the complaint was known. Disputes must be heard by an impartial independent court or oversight body without any interest in the outcome of the contract award. Challenge procedures must be completed “promptly”. The GPA is a plurilateral agreement within the WTO, which means that not all WTO members are parties to the agreement.
Currently, the Agreement has 20 Contracting Parties composed of 48 WTO Members. 36 WTO members/observers participate as observers in the GPA Committee. Of these, 12 members are in the process of acceding to the agreement. The following WTO Members are Parties to the 1994 Agreement[3] As a Party to the GPA, the United States has reciprocal access to the covered government procurement markets of all GPA Members. Under surrogacy, the United States grants access to 80 federal departments, agencies, and commissions, including all executive departments, 37 states, and seven federal energy administrations, including the Rural Utility Service. This access includes goods, services and construction services. The agreement was originally established in 1979 as the Tokyo Round Code on Government Procurement[1], which entered into force in 1981 under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. [2] It was then renegotiated in parallel with the Uruguay Round in 1994, and this version was adopted on 1 October 1994. January 1996. The agreement was subsequently revised on 30 March 2012.
The revised GPA entered into force on 6 July 2014. [2] The WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) is a “plurilateral” agreement, meaning that it applies to a number of WTO Members, but not to all Members. The GPA contains a number of provisions to ensure that tendering procedures for public procurement in signatory countries are transparent, efficient and fair. The signatories agreed that the WTO Secretariat will provide technical assistance to assist WTO Members from developing countries wishing to learn more about the GPA and/or join the GPA. To the extent appropriate and desired by the candidate countries, other intergovernmental organizations (e.B. regional development banks) or governance-oriented institutions provide technical assistance for accession to the GPA. Surrogacy applies to procurement by all contractual means, including purchase, leasing or leasing with or without a purchase option. It applies to entities listed by each signatory country in Annex I (off-site link) to the agreement.
Annex 1 of Appendix I lists the central government agencies covered, Annex 2 lists the agencies of the sub-central government and Annex 3 lists the other agencies. The current signatories of this agreement (as of April 2014) are: Armenia, Canada, Chinese Taipei, the European Union – whose Member States are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands (including Aruba), Poland, Portugal, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom – Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Liechtenstein, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. Any other government of the Member States of the WTO may accede to this Agreement on the terms agreed upon by that government and the present signatories. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Government Procurement, commonly known as the GPA, establishes a framework of government procurement rights and obligations among WTO Members that have signed it. The signatories agreed that suppliers of goods and services in other signatory countries will not be treated less favourably than domestic suppliers in government procurement covered by the agreement and that their laws, regulations and procedures relating to government procurement will be transparent and fair. The text of the agreement contains rules requiring the guarantee of open, fair and transparent conditions of competition in public procurement. However, these rules do not automatically apply to all procurement activities of each party. Rather, coverage plans play a crucial role in determining whether or not a procurement activity is covered by the agreement. Only procurement activities carried out by the covered undertakings that purchase listed goods, services or construction services with a value exceeding certain thresholds are covered by the agreement. These schedules are accessible to the public here.
The accession process begins with the submission of an application for membership and has two main aspects: negotiations between the acceding member and the parties to the GPA on the offer of GPA coverage and verification of the compatibility of the acceding member`s public procurement legislation with the requirements of the GPA – for example, in terms of transparency, procedural fairness for suppliers and national control. The agreement was revised in March 2012 and also expanded the supply it covers. This happened on the 6th. April 2014, after the two-thirds acceptance threshold was reached on March 7, 2014. It has no expiration date. The signatories to the GPA agreed that companies from other signatory countries will not be treated less favourably than domestic companies in public procurement, in accordance with the principles of national treatment and non-discrimination. Locally established businesses are treated no less well because they have foreign affiliation or ownership, or because the goods and services they offer are of foreign origin. The fundamental objective of the GPA is to open up public procurement between its parties. Following several rounds of negotiations, the GPA parties have opened up procurement activities worth an estimated $1.7 trillion to international competition (i.e., for suppliers of gPA parties that provide goods, services or construction services). (a) eligible goods from GPA and WTO FTA countries are entitled to the non-discriminatory treatment referred to in Article 25.402(a)(1); The WTO-GPA and free trade agreements establish procurement procedures to ensure fairness (see 25.408). Any enterprise from a signatory country wishing to sell goods or services covered by the GPA to a contracting entity from another signatory country listed in Annex I to the GPA may benefit from this Agreement. The World Trade Organization estimates that the value of the government procurement opportunities covered by the agreement amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
In order to ensure an open, fair and transparent playing field in government procurement, several WTO Members have negotiated the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA). For the full text of the revised GPA and the new annexes setting out the procurements covered by all GPA Parties, see GPA-113. Signatories to the GPA are required to publish summary notices on procurement opportunities for contracts covered by the agreement. Each member has identified publications in which these opportunities are published. The publications are listed in Annex II (off-site link). (2) This restriction does not apply to the purchase of supplies by the Ministry of Defence from a country with which it has entered into a mutual agreement, as provided for in the regulations of the Ministry. International intergovernmental organizations are granted observer status in the GPA Committee Yes. If you have difficulty selling goods or services to procurement companies of a signatory government because that government has not complied with this agreement, contact the U.S.
Department of Commerce`s Trade Agreement Negotiation and Compliance Hotline. The Center can help you understand your rights under this Agreement and can notify the appropriate U.S. government officials to help you resolve your issue. The U.S. Government may, if necessary, raise the specific facts of your situation with the government of the other country concerned and ask the representatives of that government to consider the matter. As a last resort, the U.S. government can rely on the WTO dispute settlement procedure. On 30 March 2012, the Parties to the GPA adopted a revision of the GPA […].