Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/104770 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
WTO Staff Working Paper No. ERSD-2014-21
Publisher: 
World Trade Organization (WTO), Geneva
Abstract: 
To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements, particularly the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), it derives insights from a large number of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) that embody substantive provisions on both government procurement and services trade. An important finding is that, from an economic perspective, general market access commitments with respect to services trade and commitments regarding government procurement of services are complementary and mutually reinforcing. In contrast, from a legal point of view and at the multilateral level, disciplines in the two areas have been "divided up" into two Agreements with different (but complementary) spheres of application: the key provisions regarding the scope of application of the GATS and the GPA make clear that each serves purposes that the other does not. Analysis of corresponding provisions of RTAs broadly supports and extends this finding. In light of the foregoing, a question arises as to possible ways of deepening disciplines in this area. Part 5 sets out, for reflection, several related options: (i) the built-in mandate in the GATS for negotiations on services procurement (Article XIII:2); (ii) "multilateralization" of the GPA; (iii) the reactivation of work in the (currently inactive) WTO Working Group on Transparency in Government Procurement; and (iv) the taking up of relevant issues in the context of bilateral or regional negotiations. Overall, we find that each of these possibilities has potential merits, though none is without related challenges.
Subjects: 
Agreement
Budget
Commercial Policy
Corruption
Developing Countries
Developing Country
Development
Economic Integration
Expenditure
GATT WTO
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
Government
Government Expenditures
International Trade Agreements
International Trade Organizations
Liberalisation
Liberalization
MFN
Multilateralism
Openness
Optimal Trade Policy
Policy
Policy Making
Protection
Protectionism
Protectionist
Public Economics
Public Expenditure
Public Finance
Public Works
State Finance
Trade
Trade Agreements
Trade Liberalization
WTO
JEL: 
F13
F15
F5
F53
F59
H5
H57
H7
H72
K2
K29
O1
O24
O29
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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