A Djaghe white paper on Transitional Procurement Measures in Agreements provides a comprehensive examination of transitional procurement measures that have been permitted under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and free trade agreements (FTAs), in particular, in agreements negotiated by the United States. It compiles posts and excerpts of posts from Perspectives on Trade that treat this subject.
It begins with the post, “Revising the GPA: Better Procedural Rules to Enhance Use”, that outlines the transitional measures in the 2014 revision of the GPA. The next post, “Procurement Week 2015 Presentation“ provides a link to an international conference paper that elaborates on the transitional measures in the GPA and U.S. FTAs.
The post, “New Procurement Opportunities under Revised GPA”, describes Israel’s commitment in the recent revision of the GPA to phase out its use of offsets for procurement covered by that Agreement. The post, “Moldova’s Terms for GPA Accession”, points out that Moldova was permitted to maintain higher transitional thresholds for two years after it became a GPA party in 2015, the only other party that applies such measures.
The post, “Survey of Transitional Measures in US FTAs”, outlines the temporary and permanent measures in U.S. FTAs, which preceded the conclusion of the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In advance of the completion of those negotiations, two posts considered the need for transitional measures to facilitate the first-time opening of the procurement markets in Malaysia and Vietnam: “Does TPP Procurement Success Depend on Four Markets?” and “Opening Malaysia’s Procurement under TPP Will Require Flexibility.” The later post examined a variety of tools that the TPP parties could use to address Malaysia’s concerns with opening its procurement market.
Five posts detail the transitional and other special measures that were included in the procurement commitments in the TPP. The first, “TPP Procurement: Initial Assessment of Agreement”, provides an overall assessment of the procurement provisions in the TPP, including transitional measures for several parties. Then, four posts detail the measures that were included in the procurement commitments of Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam:
- TPP Procurement: Brunei’s Commitments
- TPP Procurement: Malaysia's Commitments
- TPP Procurement: Mexico’s Commitments
- TPP Procurement: Vietnam’s Commitments