RESTRICTEDWORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/WGTGP/W/29
13 September 2000
(00-3526)
Working Group on Transparency
in Government Procurement
TECHNICAL COOPERATION ACTIVITIES OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL
ORGANIZATIONS
Note by the Secretariat
1. At its meeting of 7 June 2000, the Working Group on Transparency in Government
Procurement requested the Secretariat to prepare a note summarizing the information that had been
made available, to the Group or elsewhere in the WTO, on the technical cooperation activities of
IGOs (intergovernmental organi zations) in the area of government procurement (WT/WGTGP/M/10).
This note has been prepared in response to this request.
2. The information summarized is that received from ten organizations1 describing their relevant
activities which was circulated to the Group in documents WT/WGTGP/W/20 and addenda 1 to 9 in
response to a request of the Group at its June 1998 meeting (WT/WGTGP/M/5).  The Secretariat has
checked to see what other information might be available, including in response to the recentquestionnaire sent by the Secretariat to other IGOs, but this has not yielded anything additional.
3. The objectives of the technical cooperation ac tivities of IGOs vary depending on the mandate
and function of each organization.  However, there appear to be some features common to these
technical assistance activities.  The present note at tempts to describe in broad terms the main features
of the assistance available, and gives examples of activities - without referring to every relevant
project of every organization.  Section I gives a br ief overview of the objectives sought by technical
cooperation activities.  The presentation of the information on the specific technical cooperationactivities in Section II is structured on the basis of the types of such activities.
4. The note focuses on the activities of IGOs that have been specifically characterized as
constituting a form of technical cooperation.  However, it is worth also recalling that a great deal of
useful information has been generated and exchanged among participating countries, including
developing and least developed, as the result of th e other work of the IGOs, including, for example,
that of the Working Group on Transparency in Government Procurement, the Working Party on
GATS Rules, the FTAA Working Group on Government Procurement and the APEC/GPEG
(Government Procurement Experts Group).
I. CONTEXT AND PURPOSE
5. One of the main objectives of the technical cooperation activities of IGOs is related to
ensuring the proper application of the principles and rules of the organization in question by interested
governments.  For instance, as part of their fiduciary role, the World Bank and the regional
development banks focus their cooperation work on the application of their respective guidelines to
procurements carried out in the borrower countries under projects funded by their loans.  The WTO
                                                     
1 UNCITRAL, OECD, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, APEC
Government Procurement Experts Group, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, ITC,UNDP, the World Bank and UNOPS.WT/WGTGP/W/29
Page 2
Secretariat provides technical cooperation relati ng to the rules and implementation of the GPA
(Agreement on Government Procurement) mainly to WTO Members acceding to the GPA and
occasionally to other WTO Members seeking information on the GPA.
6. The establishment or improvement of the regula tory framework of procurement in individual
countries is another major area of technical coopera tion of IGOs, particularly from the perspective of
ensuring that such countries are aware of the sta ndards and the principles that are codified in the
existing international instruments on government  procurement or otherwise providing support to
procurement reform activities in individual countries.  In this connection, the World Bank has
conducted CPAR (Country Procurement Assessment Reviews) in more than six countries in each of
the six regions of the Bank.   Each review includes  the development of an action plan to improve the
public procurement system in the country under review.  In more general terms, it appears from the
submissions that technical cooperation in the area of procurement is often part of the wider efforts ofIGOs, for instance of the World Bank, the regi onal development banks, the OECD/SIGMA (the
Programme for Support for Improvement in Governance and Management in Central and Eastern
European Countries) and UNDP, to support public sector development, financial and fiscal
management, good governance and the fight against corruption.
7. Another aspect of the technical cooperation work of the international and regional IGOs is to
facilitate participation in activities aimed at the development of international principles and rules on
government procurement to be agreed by governments pursuant to the more general objectives of the
respective international or regional agreements or arrangements.  Some examples of this type of
technical cooperation are related to the APEC no n-binding principles on government procurement
developed by APEC/GPEG, the development of rules on government procurement in the FTAA
Working Group on Government Procurement and the harmonization of procurement legislation in
Central and Eastern Europe with that of the Eu ropean Community by the OECD/SIGMA programme.
The main focus of the WTO Secretariat's technical cooperation activities in this area has been on
assisting WTO Members to participate fully in the work of the Working Group on Transparency in
Government Procurement.
II. FORMS OF TECHNICAL COOPERATION
8. Legislative reforms and strengthening and supporting national public procurement institutions
to increase their capacity to manage and monitor procurement systems seem to be the main target of
technical assistance efforts.  Human resource development is carried out to support this work of
capacity building.
Assistance in the preparation of laws and regulations
9. This form of assistance relates to the formulation of new, or the improvement of existing,
laws, regulations, administrative guidelines and procedures and tender documents.  The UNCITRAL
Secretariat provides technical assistance to countries that propose to enact, or have enacted, legislation
based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services, 1994.
The World Bank and regional development banks have also been heavily engaged in this area ofactivity in a number of countries worldwide.  For instance, the World Bank has assisted in the
preparation of new national procurement legislation in, among others, Albania, Indonesia, Jamaica,
Jordan, the Kyrgyz Republic and several other Central Asian countries.  The Asian Development
Bank has been active in China, Mongolia and Bhutan.  The OECD/SIGMA programme and the ITC
have provided assistance to a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa.WT/WGTGP/W/29
Page 3
Institution building
10. Supporting the establishment or reinforcement of public procurement offices and agencies
plays an important role in technical cooperation pr ovided by some IGOs.  This form of assistance
involves advice and assistance on the establishment or strengthening of public procurement officesand procurement policy implementation units in individual government departments as well as of
procurement complaint and arbitration mechanisms.  The OECD/SIGMA programme's work in
Lithuania, Romania and the three Baltic countries, the ITC's work in Albania and Slovenia and the
Asian Development Bank's work in Mongolia and Laos are examples.
Application of Information Technology
11. Application of  information technology to govern ment procurement is part of the work of the
APEC/GPEG, the Working Group on Transparency in Government Procurement and the Committee
on Government Procurement.  Information on Memb ers' national systems was made available in a
demonstration session and a seminar on efficiency and transparency in public procurement, organized
respectively by the WTO and the Inter-American Development Bank in 1998.
Human resource development
12. Assistance in the development of human resources to build up and to sustain the capacity for
good management of public procurement is provided in various forms, such as training and
organization of seminars, symposia and workshops.
Training
13. Training activities include the training of procurement officials, the development of local
training strategies and the training of trainers.  Procurement training is regularly provided by the
World Bank and the regional development banks to the procurement staff who are directly involved in
the projects financed by the banks and to the staff of the line ministries concerned as part of the
implementation process for every new project and of the monitoring and supervision process for suchprocurement activities.  The courses for training of trainers in the field of public procurement
organized jointly by the OECD/SIGMA programme a nd the ILO Training Centre are another example
of training activities.  Moreover, training materials, in the form of manuals and handbooks, have been
prepared, for instance "Public Procurement: A Manual for Central and Eastern Europe" jointly by the
OECD/SIGMA programme and the International Training Centre of the ILO in Turin.
Workshops, seminars and conferences
14. Another form of technical assistance has been the organization of workshops, seminars and
conferences.  Some of the topics that have been treated by these activities in the past include:
procurement principles by APEC/GPEG;  applic ation of information technology to government
procurement by the WTO;  bid challenge mechanisms and remedies by APEC/GPEG;  efficiency and
transparency in public sector procurement by the Inter-American Development Bank; and the WTOAgreement on Government Procurement by the FTAA Working Group on Government Procurement
and APEC/GPEG, respectively.  The African Development Bank, ITC, the World Bank and UNDP
have jointly organized the African Public Procurement Reform Conference. The WTO Secretariat has
provided speakers to a number of these regional or national seminars on government procurement.
Also the seminars and workshops aimed at providing an overall appreciation of the WTO provisionsand mechanisms generally include a presentation on the work on government procurement in the
Working Group on Transparency in Government Procurement.
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