ONE of the richest tax havens in Europe Liechtenstein has become the
first WTO Member to ratify the amended version of the WTO Agreement on
Government Procurement (GPA) that was adopted on 30 March 2012. Norbert Frick,
Ambassador of Liechtenstein to the WTO, handed the formal documents of
Liechtenstein’s acceptance to WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy.
Director-General Lamy congratulated Liechtenstein for being the first of
the GPA Parties register its acceptance of the Protocol of Amendment.
“By
having completed its ratification process, Liechtenstein is showing the way.
Others should now quickly follow so that the revised Agreement can enter into
force by the Bali Ministerial Conference,” Mr. Lamy said. He added “the revised
Agreement on Government Procurement means $80-100 billion in new market access
opportunities. It also means better value for money for its
participants”.
The
Protocol of Amendment will come into effect upon its acceptance by two thirds of
the Parties to the Agreement. The Chairman of the Committee on Government
Procurement, Mr. Bruce Christie (Canada), has urged the Parties to bring the
amended text into effect in time to be celebrated at the upcoming WTO
Ministerial Conference to be held in Bali, in December of 2013.
Mr.
Lamy added that entry into force of the amendment was also important in that it
would enable work to begin on the agreed Future Work Programmes of the Committee
on Government Procurement which will deal with such topical issues as access to
procurement markets by small and medium-sized enterprises; sustainability in
public procurement; and improvement of the statistics that are available
relating to Parties’ operations under the Agreement.
The
GPA, a plurilateral agreement within the WTO system, provides a framework for
the progressive liberalization of markets for the procurement of goods, services
and construction services (public works). It is built around the principles of
non-discrimination, transparency and procedural fairness, and embodies a set of
best practices in public procurement based on the experience of the
participating governments. The existing version of the Agreement was developed
in parallel to the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The revised
text of the Agreement and expansion of related market access commitments
attached to the Protocol were negotiated by the Parties over a period of more
than ten years. The negotiation reached a political conclusion in 2011, prior to
the formal adoption of the results of the negotiations in March 2012.
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