Strasbourg, 13/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - The acceptance threshold required for it to enter into force was reached on 7 March with Israel's ratification of its protocol agreement.
The revised WTO agreement on government procurement (GPA) will enter into force on 6 April of this year. The president of the WTO committee on government procurement, the Canadian ambassador Bruce Christie, confirmed that the acceptance threshold of two thirds of the parties to the revised GPA required for its entry into force was reached when Israel ratified the protocol on 7 March this year.
Adopted in March 2012, the revised version of the GPA updates and rationalises the 1994 text. The revised GPA takes proper account of the widespread use of electronic procurement tools, for example. It provides gains in market access for the parties' businesses that have been estimated as in the range of $80-100 billion a year. This results from the addition to the GPA's scope of application of numerous government entities (ministries and agencies) and the coverage of new services and other areas of public procurement activities. The revised GPA also incorporates improved transitional measures that are intended to facilitate accession to the agreement by developing and least-developed countries. To date, ten countries which are stakeholders to the revised GPA have ratified it - Liechtenstein, Norway, Canada, Taiwan, the United States, Hong Kong, the European Union, Iceland, Singapore and Israel. Five other parties have still to ratify it - Armenia, Aruba, South Korea, Japan and Switzerland.
“The revised WTO agreement on government procurement will open markets and promote good governance in the participating member economies. The fact that this has been achieved so quickly shows the importance that the parties attach to the GPA and is further evidence, after the successful Bali package, that the WTO is back in business”, said Director General of the WTO, Roberto Azevedo.
The GPA commits its party countries to certain core disciplines regarding transparency, competition and good governance in the public procurement sector. It covers the procurement of goods, services and capital infrastructure by public authorities. The aim of the agreement is to open up, as much as possible, government procurement markets to international competition and to help eradicate corruption in this sector. In addition to the 43 WTO members that already participate in the GPA, ten other WTO countries, including China, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand and Ukraine, are in the process of negotiating accession to it. Government procurement accounts for 20% of global GDP. (EH)