GPA/W/342  
 
7 July 2017  
(17-3663) Page: 1/6 
Committee on Government Procurement  Original: English  
 
CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT  AT THE RECENT  SECRETARIAT  TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE  
WORKSHOP ON GOVERNME NT PROCUREMENT FOR L ATIN AMERICA1 
In the course of the Committee's informal meeting held on 21 June 2017, the Chairman asked the 
Secretariat to circulate to delegations  his remarks , delivered on 4 May 2017 , at the WTO Advanced 
Regional Workshop on Government Procurement for Latin American Countries held in Buenos 
Aires, Argentina on 3 -5 May 2017 . The  Workshop was organized by the Secretariat, in co -
operation with the gov ernment of Argentina, for the benefit of the countries of Latin America, 
pursuant to the Secretariat's technical assistance and training plan (WT/COMTD/W/211).  
 
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REMARKS BY JOHN NEWHAM, CHAI R OF THE WTO COMMITTEE ON GOV ERNMENT PROCUREMENT , 
AT A TECHNICAL  ASSISTANCE  WORKSHOP ON GOVERNME NT PROCUREMENT  
FOR LATIN AMERICAN C OUNTRIES  
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 3 -5 May 2017  
Introduction  
Ladies and Gentlemen,  
 
It is indeed a great honour for me to have this opportunity to address you today and to pr ovide 
you with some personal thoughts and perspectives on the subject of government procurement 
with particular emphasis, of course, on the World Trade Organization ( WTO) Agreement on 
Government Procurement (GPA) and the WTO Committee on Government Procure ment 
(Committee) , of which I am the Chair.  
 
In my remarks, which are made strictly in a personal capacity,  I hope to set out what I consider to 
be some of the strengths and  the limitations  of the GPA both in terms of its ongoing relevance and 
in respect o f the ongoing development of the Agreement and growth of its membership.  
 
Historical Context of the GPA  
I will start by asking the question why is government procurement important to the WTO? For 
some, it may not be immediately obvious why it should featur e in the Organization . After all, 
government procurement is not, first and foremost, about trade per se – it's about buying goods 
and services for government and public consumption.  
 
The WTO has three core functions which can be summarised as providing:  
 
 dissemination of best practice in terms of trade policies;  
 a forum for negotiating international trade agreements; and  
 a resource for hearing and resolving trade disputes.  
                                                
1 Delivered and circulated on the Chairman's responsibility.  All proceedings at the workshop were strictly 
without prejudice to the views and interests of WTO Members and Observers.  GPA/W/342  
 
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  As members of the WTO, governments through their representatives negotiate trade ag reements 
which serve  a range of functions  including that of allowing, even facilitating, access to each other 's 
markets. All Members of the WTO have recognised that mutual opening up of their markets to 
trade, in the right circumstances, can deliver import ant benefits for growth and the welfare of their 
citizens .  
 
Governments are also buyers of goods and services – indeed very important buyer s. Government 
procurement represents 15% or more  of the total share of GDP in both developed and developing 
countrie s. While all Members  have opened their markets to varying extents as part of WTO 
negotiations, relatively  few (about a third of all WTO Members) have, through the GPA,  permitted 
access to the one part of their economy over which they have direct control  – government 
procurement. The behaviour of governments as buyers sends important messages. The WTO 's 
involvement in government procurement stems, in part, from a recognition among some Members  
that it is somewhat contradictory for a government to ask for or support open trade policies in 
other economic sectors  while maintaining a closed market in terms of its own purchasing .  
 
What the WTO adds, in terms of government procurement, is the forum for negotiations; the 
promotion of best practice s; the availabilit y of technical assistance; and the resources for dispute 
settlement. The first WTO text concerning government procurement arose in the Tokyo Round 's 
1979 Code on Government Procurement. This recognised, and I quote:  
 
"the need to establish international pr ocedures on notification, consultation, 
surveillance and dispute settlement with a view to ensuring a fair, prompt and 
effective enforcement of the international provisions on government procurement and 
to maintain the balance of rights and obligations at the highest possible level ". 
While the rationale has evolved , in certain respects, through subsequent developments, I think the 
words I have quoted still hold  true today. And they have been honoured and carried forward in the 
present GPA. Governments have undertaken to behave in a transparent and fair way; to recognise 
and submit to a dispute settlement process; and to recognise  certain rights and obligations in 
these regards , on the basis of reciprocal market opening . 
 
The 2012 Revised Agreement on Governm ent Procurement improved on the preceding version (the 
1994 Agreement)  in various ways. It simplified relevant procedures; recognised the role and 
impact of developments in information and communications technologies (ICT); clarified and 
improved different ial treatment provisions (S&D) available to developing Members  acceding to the 
GPA; and promoted good governance. The GPA is due to be revised again, and it will be in the 
hands of its Members  - the Parties  - what exactly this will entail.  
 
Importance of G overnment Procurement at the National Level  
I know that everyone in this room is aware of the importance of government procurement at the 
national level in terms of:  
 
 its economic impact;  
 its essential role in the provision of quality goals and services fo r governments and 
citizens, at reasonable cost;  
 its role in providing business opportunities to commercial interests; and  
 its influence in promoting competitiveness through a transparent and fair system.  
Its economic influence is evident. As I  have said, government procurement represents up to 15% 
or more of the total share of GDP in both developed and developing co untries. Government 
procurement covered by the GPA is worth some 1.7  trillion US dollars annually. Businesses value 
being suppliers to the Gove rnment and Public sectors as it provides them with a level of 
endorsement and of course a customer that nearly always pays the bill. Dear to the heart of every 
Finance Ministry is the role government procurement plays in ensuring value -for-money through a 
transparent and competitive procurement system. This also reduces the risk of fraud and 
corruption - a goal important not just to public administrators but to our citizens as well. Opening  GPA/W/342  
 
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  procurement to foreign suppliers can also provide more innovative s olutions and additional options 
when there are local capacity constraints.  
 
Government procurement can also act as an example of best practice. In recent years the issue of 
sustainable public procurement has come to the fore , underlining the importance of taking into 
account all costs when evaluating tenders – not just the upfront costs but also the lifetime costs 
including costs relat ed to servicing, energy and end -of-use disposal. Government procurement is 
developing into other areas such a Social Public Procurement which envisages it as having a role 
as a vehicle for other government policies, for example, in prioritising employment for 
disadvantaged groups. There 's nothing new in this of course, but what is new is the growing body 
of work concerning how best government procurement can be  implemented in support of wider 
policies.  
 
Recent accessions to the GPA have cited GPA membership and the GPA accession process itself as 
an important catalyst for national reforms which have led to:  
 
 improved national tr ansparent procurement systems fostering greater public confidence 
in the administration of public moneys;  
 reductions in corruption and fraud; and  
 reductions in waste and greater efficiencies through competitive and transparent 
tendering systems.  
Indeed,  recently -acceded Members make  the point that  the aim of joining the GPA  can also be 
useful in motivating and catalyzing  legislative and systems -based reform programmes at the 
national level.  
 
But, surely all of this can  also be achieved nationally and withou t having to join an international 
agreement? It can, and it has in a number of  the countries here today. Also, a number of Latin 
American countries have extensive bilateral trade agreements which include government 
procurement provisions. Indeed, much of t he language and structure of those agreements reflect 
that of the GPA. One could argue that there 's no need to consider the GPA in such a context. This 
could be true although it also suggests that in such a context there may be little difficulty 
encountere d or effort needed in terms of joining the GPA , thereby securing also the market access 
benefits that the Agreement provides  and helping to shape the Agreement's future . 
 
To elaborate, t here are other reasons to consider membership.  
 
Importance of Governm ent Procurement at the International Level  
Membership of the GPA is a means to achieving two separate but complimentary objectives: 
market access in a rules based system , and influence over the system itself and its future 
development. The GPA will continu e to develop as long as its membership so will it. I  have already 
mentioned Sustainable Public Procurement and Social Public Procurement as potential areas for 
future negotiations. Another area that the WTO Committee on Government Procurement is 
examining is the participation of Small and Mediums Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in government 
procurement.  
 
The SME  sector is vitally important in every country - rich or poor. The sector accounts for the vast 
majority of employment and is the feedstock for the large enterprises of the future. We all know 
that SMEs face difficulties in competing for government procurement due to their lack of scale. 
Sometimes there are concerns that indigenous SMEs will be less able to successfully compete in 
government procurement if the market is opened to foreign competition. Coming from Ireland, a 
member of the European Union I 'm not aware of any data supporting this within our very open 
internal government procurement market. Frankly, our SMEs in Ireland compete with each other 
or with large multinational companies. So we have a common challenge in terms of making it 
easier for SMEs  to compete. The Parties  to the Agreement  are learning from each other and are 
currently exploring what policies and practices among Parties  have success fully encoura ged the 
participation of SMEs.  
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  There are many other possible areas for us to examine in the future including many of the topics 
that have been discussed at this workshop. As these topics influence the direction of the GPA so 
too will the GPA influence the development of your government procurement systems. The GPA is 
the bedrock of many national systems and indeed, as I have already mentioned, of many bilateral 
and potential plurilateral agreements. The Parties  to the GPA recognise this and va lue the 
influence that they hold . 
 
The GPA can be criticized on the basis that it is a plurilateral Agreement, a "club" consisting largely 
of developed countries. The membership of the Agreement is changing, though, to include an 
increasing number of trans ition economies. A nd anyway – so what? The best way of changing a 
club is to broaden the membership. As for criticism of the plurilateral basis, that it undermines 
multilateral principles – if these criticisms are valid, then they hold even more for bilate ral 
agreements of which there are a great many. Again, increasing membership of the GPA will make 
it less plurilateral and move it closer to a full multilateral basis.  
 
In recent times, of course, multilateral institutions,  including the multilateral rule s-based trading 
system , have been challenged or criticized in various ways . The accusations levelled are often that 
the system is ineffective, slow, irrelevant - even moribund. Emphatically, t his does not apply to 
the GPA which is a particularly dynamic an d effective part of the WTO rules -based system , 
precisely  because the Parties  have insisted that it functions that way . Of course there are 
difficulties and disagreements but the Parties  have made it work. I stand by this claim having 
experienced directly,  as Chair, how the GPA Committee works effectively on the basis of Members' 
inputs  and direction, with effective Secretariat support . 
 
Role of the Committee  
Currently, t he Committee brings together 47 WTO Members , with the Republic of Moldova, 
Montenegro, New Zealand and Ukraine having joined over the last couple of years. Active 
negotiations are underway for Australia, China, Kyrgyz Republic , Tajikistan , Russia and the former 
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia  and I would expect negotiations to conclude for, a t least, two of 
these within the year. The Committee also has  about 30  observers including five from Latin 
America.  
 
The Committee generally has three full sets of meetings, usually encompassing formal and 
informal sessions, during the year and is often a ttended by the capital -based officials . Normally, 
the meetings take place over the course of three days with the first two days devoted to bilateral 
meetings. These bilateral meetings afford opportunities to share perspectives on current 
negotiations and d iscussions but also provide useful opportunities for Parties  to iron out any 
difficulties and resolve potential disputes. This works quite well – very few disagreements have 
gone on to dispute settlement  though this is always available when it is needed to  ensure that 
commitments are honoured . 
 
Apart from formal sessions for the purpose of taking decisions e.g. on relevant accessions or the 
Committee's Annual Report, t he Committee  meeting itself typically consist s of three substantive 
parts which are conduc ted in informal session . The first concerns accessions , during which WTO 
Members seeking accession to the Agreement  update the Committee  on progress being made and 
answers questions posed by Parties . Accession to the Agreement is some ways both 
straig htforward and complex. The aim of the accession process is two -fold: it is to ag ree on the 
future Party's market access commitments and to verify that it has in place legislation and a 
procurement system that  will support and fulfil the GPA's requirements. Duri ng the process, 
consideration can also be given to transitional measures that are potentially available to support 
the accession of developing countries, where approved by Parties.  
 
The contents of new Parties' market access schedules will be familiar to t hose of you who have 
been involved in drafting government procurement chapters in bilateral trade agreements. The 
schedule  contains several annexes which set out the entities covered by the Agreement, the goods 
and services covered and the corresponding th reshold values and of course the exceptions to the 
coverage. The GPA is not a one size fits all blueprint - each party 's schedule is different meaning 
that each party 's commitments are different. It 's very common for an accession candidate to make 
revised offers on the basis of  Parties'  suggestions during the negotiations. With respect to the time 
involved, accessions can take as little as a year, or longer, depending on the relevant Member's 
readiness and ambition.  GPA/W/342  
 
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  The second part of the meeting concerns t he administration and further development of the GPA. 
During the last negotiations, Parties  identified a number of areas for future consideration which are 
now being examined by the Committee  such as Statistics, SMEs, and Sustainable Public 
Procurement. Th ere are some other topics such as Private Public Partnerships which , while 
identified, have yet to be discussed.  
 
A third component of the meeting is of course housekeeping such as dealing with notifications and 
transparency. Again, it is noteworthy how un contentious transparency is within the Committee . 
Generally there is an excellent record of Parties  adhering to their commitments in this regard.  
 
If I were to express  one concern it is that , sometimes , the perspectives of a limited set of Parties 
determin e the discussions. This is not at all a criticism of those Members  – indeed they are to be 
applauded for their strong support and level of engagement, but fresh perspectives often fertilise 
the ground for broader discussions and novel approaches. It is not iceable how new Parties  to the 
Agreement catalyse new discussions and provide fresh perspectives which are welcomed by all. For 
example, following its recent accession, Ukraine is now a very active party at the Committee. It 
recently made a presentation on  its electronic government procurement system which includes 
powerful business intelligence modules . It has  even proposed that consideration be given to 
developing a more integrated platform or set of platforms  for government procurement  
opportunities cove red by the GPA . It also asked the very pertinent  question of what more can be 
done for newly acceding Parties , noting that accession is not an end but only a milestone in a 
continuing process.  
 
Indeed, I can say with hand on heart that the Parties  to the G PA are welcoming of new accessions. 
That is not to say the negotiations are any easier of course, but rather that the negotiations are 
encouraged, supported and treated seriously and responsibly by the Parties . At the conclusion of 
the accession process, t he new Parties are enthusiastically welcomed to the Committee without 
exception.  
 
When one looks at the regional make -up of the membership it is noticeable that Latin America and 
Africa are absent. For this reason, the Committee  has welcomed the initiative  of the WTO in 
organising this workshop and is supportive of my own attempts to have a conversation with Latin 
American countries about  the potential benefits of membership of the GPA  and any related 
challenges or reservations  that they may hold . To be sur e, I hope that, one day, there will be a 
similar outreach initiative s in relation to other parts of the world that currently are not well 
represented in the GPA's Membership .  
 
Potential GPA Membership by Latin American Countries  
And so, if there is one me ssage that I would like to convey today it is that the Committee  on 
Government Procurement  is ready and willing to engage with Latin American countries . 
I'm very curious to see if you are open to exploring this engagement further. While I do not wish 
to stereotype a region as large and complex as Latin America,  it strikes me that many of the 
ingredients for membership are already in place for Latin American countries.  
 
Firstly:  
 
 Many countries already have in place sophisticated government procurement syst ems 
and legislation in place which aligns with GPA principles.  The use of e -procurement tools, 
as we have heard, is particularly well -developed.  
 Many countries already have negotiated government procurement chapters in bilateral 
and plurilateral trade agre ements.  
As such the capacity and readiness to negotiate accession to the GPA is there – it is not a stretch. 
Indeed, the GPA can be seen as  an efficient way to negotiate additional market access rights and 
possibilities with 47 other countries at once.  
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  Secondly:  
 
 Many countries share a common objective of using transparency measures related to 
government procurement to reduce corruption, increase the efficiencies and 
effectiveness of public procurement, and thereby  increase public confidence.  
As such, joi ning an international agreement like the GPA would reinforce and give added profile 
(and also due recognition) to efforts being made at the national level . 
 
Thirdly:  
 
 There is , very appropriately, an appetite to  enhance the  influence of Latin American 
countries at the WTO. Indeed, m any countries represented here today already exercise 
an important leadership role in the WTO . Participating in the GPA would extend this 
influence and help shape the future direction of the GPA.  
 Many countries are also intereste d in the development of government procurement 
policies and how they can be used to complement  other public concerns such as 
sustainability  and the promotion of SMEs . Of course, these are important topics of 
discussion in the WTO Committee that administers  the GPA.  
 As more and more countries join  from other regions of the world, access to their 
government procurement markets will be all the more important to some of your 
enterprises, many of which are already internationally competitive  and seeking to 
broad en their base of operations and participation in a global value chains . 
As such, there are potential benefits from GPA participation not only to your countries but also  to 
the international rules -based trading system of which your countries are , to your cr edit, strong 
supporters.  
 
This workshop is exploring many of these factors and clearly some are more important than 
others, and each country in this region has its own national priorities and outlook depending on its 
unique circumstances. You know better t han anybody that much has happened politically and 
economically in this region over the last few years. Recalling the first principles that I quoted 
earlier, perhaps it is an opportune time, as we approach the WTO 's 11th Ministerial Conference in 
Buenos Ai res in December of this year , for Latin American countries to consider if there is merit in 
sending a message which supports the WTO 's work on government procurement. Perhaps your 
Ministers and other Ministers from other regions might consider, over the co urse of the next few 
years, re -examining the potential and relevance of the GPA. Perhaps, indeed, you might wish to 
explore this further among yourselves and with GPA Parties  at the upcoming Ministerial 
Conference. Indeed, you might want to consider the op tion of observership which as we have 
heard is a useful step without obligations.  I'm interested to hear your views and convey any 
messages you might have back to the Parties  in Geneva . 
 
I, for one, certainly look forward to a time when the GPA benefits fr om inclusion of Latin American 
Parties  and is influenced by Latin American experience and perspectives.  Thank you very much for 
listening to me today. My thanks also to Rob Anderson and his team from the WTO Secretariat for 
their hard work in organizing an d presenting the workshop and for giving me the opportunity to 
speak to you today. I am learning a great deal from our conversations  over the course of this 
workshop and I would welcome hear ing your perspectives on the issues raised. I wish you all 
every c ontinued success.  
 
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