Procurement / By / February 3, 2021 / 2 minutes of reading

UK Soon To Join WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement

February 3, 2021
Procurement

On the 7th October 2020, the WTO’s Government Procurement Act (GPA) members granted the UK the right to submit its GPA instrument of accession to the Committee in 2021.

This means the UK will join the GPA in its own right once the EU member transition periods ends on 31st December 2020.

What’s The WTO Government Procurement Act?

The GPA is an agreement set up within the framework of the WTO. It began in 1979 as the “Tokyo Round Code on Government Procurement”, in an effort to bring government procurement under internationally agreed trade rules. After several amendments and scope expansions, it became the GPA, signed in Marrakesh in 1994.

The agreements allow WTO member states (36 of the 48) to mutually open government procurement markets, estimated to be $1.7 trillion per year in international trade opportunities.

In addition, the text of the agreement sets out rules requiring open and transparent conditions of competition in government procurement.

The benefit is that the agreement allows domestic and international businesses to compete equally in foreign procurement markets, within a framework of fairness and transparency.

What Does UK Accession Mean?

Essentially, the UK Government will continue to access the foreign suppliers to its procurement markets, worth GBP 68 billion*, just as it has as a member of the EU, but this time under its own steam.

In exchange, UK businesses will have access to the £1.3 Trillion of GPA’s covered procurement markets worth over GBP 1.3 trillion*.

Ultimately, this means greater opportunities for UK businesses to supply to international governments.

The official UK response to its agreed accession is here.

–Fiona Hunt

 

To talk to us about our work, or your government procurement data needs,get in touch.

August 3, 2021

New Carbon Reporting To Impact 1,000 Suppliers

New rules to help reduce CO2 in public contracting show that at least 720 suppliers will be required to provide a detailed...
Read more...
August 3, 2021

Trade, Policy And Procurement Meet Again.

The UK's Trade and Agriculture Commission has published its final report, along with twenty-two recommendations, one of which is to direct the...
Read more...
August 3, 2021

McGowan Government Enhances Aboriginal Procurement Policy

In 2018, Western Australian Labour Premier Mark McGowan introduced a landmark Aboriginal Procurement policy. The objective of the policy was to improve...
Read more...
August 3, 2021

Are Trade Agencies Becoming More Like Hedge Funds?

Trade promotion, where a country promotes its companies and products to be bought by another, has a certain image. One imagines suave...
Read more...
August 3, 2021

Meeting The Research Challenge

Our clients expect us to answer tough questions. Questions like, "what's the total value of public contracting worldwide?" or, "who's the leading...
Read more...
August 3, 2021

US Consults On Social Procurement

The US Government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested submissions on the "methods and leading practices" to assess whether agencies'...
Read more...
August 3, 2021

Harnessing Procurement To Tackle Climate Change

As experts in procurement and open data, we are pleased to see the recent announcement that global confectionery giant Mars is harnessing...
Read more...
June 29, 2021

Western Australian Govt Rolls Out New Procurement Process.

We're always pleased to see governments reviewing their procurement processes with a view to greater transparency. The Western Australian Government has recently...
Read more...
June 9, 2021

Commit To Net Zero To Win Government Contracts.

....So says the Cabinet Office, with new measures released on World Environment Day that will require businesses to publish clear and credible...
Read more...
June 2, 2021

Major Procurement Project For Inverness Castle

This week sees Highland Council publish the main construction and refurbishment tenders for the Inverness Castle Transformation project, through Public Contracts Scotland...
Read more...
May 27, 2021

Six Considerations When Marketing To Governments.

We might say marketing to the government is similar to marketing to any other target market, particularly another B2B target market. And...
Read more...
May 17, 2021

Data Mastery.

It's easy to say that you're a 'world leading' enterprise. It's much harder to back it up. But we genuinely believe that...
Read more...
May 4, 2021

Recommendations For Tackling Gender Disparity For Governments

Clearly, the UK Government is a leader in the field of open data and transparency: it is this commitment to transparency as...
Read more...
June 2, 2021

Does Government Business Correlate To Gender Disparity?

As part of our Procuring Inequality report, we've analysed whether winning government business equates to a gender pay disparity. By linking gender...
Read more...
May 5, 2021

The Worst Performing Suppliers To Government In The Gender Pay Divide.

As our analysis of the gender pay gap within strategic suppliers to government from our Procuring Inequality report, showed a broad overlap...
Read more...

Newsletter

Compelling research, insights and data directly into your inbox.

Recent media stories

Search

Recent articles

Scroll to Top