The recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) permits several parties to apply a wide array of transitional and other special measures to facilitate the opening of their government procurement markets. Such measures have been incorporated into other
On September 16th, the WTO Committee on Government Procurement (Committee) approved the terms of Moldova’s accession to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). It gave Moldova six months, until mid-March 2016, in which to submit its instrument of
On September 17 and 18, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is presenting a symposium on “The Revised WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA): an Emerging Pillar of Twenty-first Century Trade and Development” at the WTO headquarters in Geneva,
Under the World Bank reform, a member of the GPA may be permitted to use its own procurement system for Bank-financed projects if it passes a robust assessment. On July 21, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a major reform of the
At a June 3 meeting, the WTO Committee on Government Procurement saw progress on efforts to expand the membership of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and to fully implement its recent revision. Of particular significance, Australia has finally
The WTO has launched a Government Procurement Market Access Information Resource, the e-GPA portal. This user-friendly website provides a single point of access to the market access information under the revised Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), as
NFTC Asks NJ Governor to Veto Buy America Legislation UPDATE: On February 5, 2015, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed several legislative measures that would have imposed new Buy America requirements on procurement by New Jersey state agencies and
Recently, the Republic of Korea has entered two new free trade agreements (FTA), one with an existing party to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and the other with a country about to become a GPA member. Both include government procurement
Exclusion of government procurement from multilateral trade agreements: Government procurement is excluded from the national treatment obligations in both the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which covers goods, and the WTO General Agreement on
Joining the GPA would strengthen Ukraine’s procurement system and buttress its efforts to fight corruption. In a recent article (June 14, 2014), the Economist reported on efforts in Ukraine to reverse the “runaway corruption” that characterized the rule