As discussed in an
earlier posting, the first revision of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) was implemented in April 2014. To date, 12 parties (Canada, the European Union, Hong Kong China, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Netherlands with respect to Aruba, Norway, Singapore, Chinese Taipei and the United States) have ratified the revised GPA. Only three parties (Armenia, Republic of Korea and Switzerland) have not yet approved it. The
GPA website provides detailed information on the revision of the GPA, including the
text of the revised GPA. It also details the procurement that the parties cover under the Agreement, as well as provides information on the parties' procurement systems.
Procurement Covered under the GPA by Each Party
Each party has specified its procurement that is subject to the principles and procedures of the GPA based on four elements:
- the procuring entities that it covers (central government entities, sub-central government entities and other entities)
- the goods, services and construction services that it covers under the Agreement
- the threshold values above which a party’s procurement activities are covered by the Agreement
- any exceptions to its coverage
Earlier postings outlined the procurement that
the United States and
other parties added in the revision of the GPA. All of the procurement that each party covers under the GPA is described in its annexes. There are two categories of annexes. First are the annexes of the parties that have ratified the revised GPA, and the second are the annexes for all the parties under the 1994 GPA. (The 1994 GPA remains in effect until all the parties have ratified the revision.)
Revised GPA Annexes: Each party that has accepted the GPA revision has set out its covered procurement in seven annexes to
Appendix I of the revised GPA:
- Annex 1 (Central government entities)
- Annex 2 (Sub-central government entities
- Annex 3 (Other government entities)
- Annex 4 (Goods)
- Annex 5 (Services)
- Annex 6 (Construction services)
- Annex 7 (General Notes - exclusions and derogations)
The procurement that the parties that have not yet accepted the revision of the GPA (Armenia, Republic of Korea and Switzerland) have agreed to provide, once they accept the revised GPA, can be found in
WTO document GPA/113.
1994 GPA Annexes: The
procurement covered by all the GPA parties under the 1994 GPA (before the revision) are set out in five annexes.
Information on National Procurement Systems of GPA Parties
Information on each
party’s national procurement legislation can be found on the GPA website. In addition, under the revised GPA, parties list in
Appendix II the electronic or paper media in which each party publishes its laws, regulations, judicial decisions, administrative rulings of general application, standard contact clauses and procedures regarding procurement covered by the GPA.
Information on Publication of Notices and Statistics by GPA Parties
Appendix III of the revised GPA lists the electronic or paper media in which each party publishes its notices required by the revised GPA. The notices include:
- Notices of intended procurement
- Summary notices
- Notices of planned procurement
- Notices inviting suppliers to participate in a multi-use list of suppliers
- Notices of contract awards
Appendix IV of the revised GPA lists the website address(es) where each Party publishes statistics on its procurement covered under the GPA and information on awarded contracts.
Additional information will be available as soon as the WTO Secretariat completes its construction of a
WTO E-GPA portal. The portal is intended to "serve as a market access information tool for governments, businesses and other interested parties.”
Jean Heilman Grier
September 15, 2014
Related Posts
Implementation of Revised GPA
Revising the GPA: Better Procedural Rules to Enhance Use
Background: New Procurement Opportunities under Revised GPA
Background: U.S. Procurement Covered under Revised GPA
