WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  GPA/101 
10 July 2009 
 
 (09-3404) 
Committee on Government Procurement Original:   English 
  
 
STATISTICAL REPORTS 1996-2006 ON PUBLIC PROCUREMENT ACCORDING 
TO ARTICLE XIX:5 OF THE AGREEMENT ON GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT 
 
Communication from the European Communities
 
 
 
 The following communication, dated 9 July 2009,  is being circulated at the request of the 
Delegation of the European Communities.  
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  The EU is pleased to submit to the Committ ee on Government Procurement its statistical 
reports for the years 1996-2006.
1  The EU is currently preparing its statistical report for 2007. 
  The EC considers that statistical reports are an important tool for the progress of the current 
negotiations on coverage. 
  The EU statistical reports are structured as follows:  
• Estimated value of above- and below-threshold procurement. 
• Estimated value of above -threshold procurement. 
• Detailed breakdown for Annex 1 – total value of  contracts for each contracting authority 
of Annex 1 broken down by type of contract (services, works, supplies), type of purchase 
(by GPA categories – cf. infra), nationality of  supplier of service provider and Article XV 
cases. 
• Detailed breakdown for Annex 2 – total value of contracts for regional and local 
authorities and bodies governed by public law broken down by type of contract (services, 
works, supplies), type of purchase (by GPA categories – cf. infra), nationality of supplier of service provider and Article XV cases. 
• Detailed breakdown for Annex 3 – total value of contracts for utilities covered by the 
GPA (airports, ports, urban transport, electri city and water) broken down by type of 
contract (services, works, supplies), type of purchase (by GPA categories – cf. infra), nationality of supplier of servi ce provider and Article XV cases. 
                                                     
 
1 These statistical reports will be subsequently circulated in documents:  GPA/21/Add.4 (1996);  
GPA/22/Add.6 (1997);  GPA/29/Add.6 (1998);  GPA/40/Add.6 (1999);  GPA/62/Add.6 (2000);  GPA/70/Add.6 (2001);  GPA/76/Add.7 (2002);  GPA/80/Add.7 (2003);  GPA/84/Add.6 (2004);  GPA/88/Add.5 (2005);  and 
GPA/91/Add.4 (2006). GPA/101 
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   The EC wishes to underline that it takes its statis tical obligations very seriously.  It opted to 
defer the publication of its statistical report until a satisfactory level of data reporting would be 
reached for all administrative levels
 and for above-threshold procurement , rather than opt for the 
publication of a partial or superficial report that woul d betray the spirit and the letter of the statistical 
obligations. 
 
 The EC recognizes that further progress is still necessary for the recording of cross-border 
procurement (i.e. nationality of suppliers).  The EC  is ready to discuss these technical matters with 
other GPA Parties and share common difficulties to seek satisfactory solutions allowing for a proper 
monitoring of the Agreement. 
 
I. ESTIMATED VALUE OF ABOVE- AND BELOW-THRESHOLD PROCUREMENT 
 The EC estimates that the total amount of purchases of goods and services (incl. construction 
services) by public authorities and utilities in Eur ope amounted to EUR 1,951 billion in 2006.  
Below-threshold procurement can be thus easily de rived by deducting above-threshold procurement. 
 
 The EC estimates these purchases on the basis of  the national accounts of its member States, 
which are harmonized through the ESA95 system that transposes the System of National Accounts (SNA) adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission, and through input-output tables for utilities (Annex 3).  The former is the sum of gross fixed capital formation, intermediate consumption 
and social transfers in kind.  As from the year 2000, breakdowns of this data by  levels of government 
(central government, state government, local governme nt and social security funds) are available.  
Purchases of utilities are derived from input-output ta bles and have been crosschecked by estimating 
their procurement through financial accounts (through  the sum of fixed capital investment cash flows 
and costs of purchases of services and goods in the profit-and-loss account).  
 The EC believes that this is the most re liable method to estimate the volume of public 
procurement below the thresholds as each EC me mber State has implemented different types of 
legislation for its below-threshold procurement (n ational publication obligations apply at different 
thresholds in each member State).  This is the me thod also used within the EC to estimate the public 
procurement falling outside of the scope of the EC Directives.  II. ESTIMATED VALUE OF ABOVE-THRESHOLD PROCUREMENT 
 The EC estimates public procurement above the thresholds on the basis of the number of calls 
for competition published in the Official Journal.   The estimated value of above-threshold proc urement represented in 1996 is EUR 95 billion, 
i.e. 1.6 per cent of EU GDP.  In 2006, this va lue had doubled to EUR 377billion, hence 3.2 per cent of 
EU GDP.  To avoid the issue of deflators, the EC  proposes to present in the graph below the evolution 
of this indicator from 1994 until 2006 as a percentage of its GDP.   Besides the increase of number of publications in the EU, the enlargement of the EU in 2004 
played an important role in the increase of th e size of the EU public procurement market (from 
EUR 9 billion in 2004 to EUR 34.2 billion in 2006). 
  GPA/101 
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III. DETAILED BREAKDOWNS 
 The EC has been putting big efforts to provide for a detailed data reporting for all 
administrative levels  and for above-threshold procurement . 
  The volume of data reported in the breakdowns has been evolving from 70.6 billion in 1996 to 227 billion in 2006. 
 
 Breakdowns have been based on two sources:  da ta provided by the EC member States and/or 
the Official Journal.  As from 2002, missing annex es in a specific EC member State national report 
have been completed with the Official Journal.  
1. Thresholds 
 Many of the public works contracts can have a smaller value than the GPA thresholds, as they 
are part of a larger project.  More generally, it is also possible that a contracting authority estimated 
ex ante that the value of a contract fell above the threshold, but the final value at which it was 
awarded fell below the thresholds.  2. Listing of contracts by GPA classification 
 At its meeting of 4 June 1996, the Comm ittee on Government Procurement adopted the 
product classification system of 26 product categorie s.  The Committee on Government Procurement 
also adopted the services classification system, as amended by merging category 71 and 73 into one category named "transport services".  
 In accordance with this Decision, the EU h as opted to present its GPA reports 1996-2006 by 
reference to these 26 product categories (GPA code s 1 to 26) and to CPC prov. for services (GPA 
codes 51 to 94).  However, categories 71 and 73 have been kept distinct.  Public procurement advertized in the OJEU 
(as a % of GDP) - 1994-2006
0.00%  0.50%  1.00%  1.50%  2.00%  2.50%  3.00%  3.50%  1994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006GPA/101 
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  3. Supplier and service provider nationality 
 The EC has not yet found a consistent method to trace contracts awarded to companies from 
other GPA Parties as a large number of contracts we re awarded to suppliers that are subsidiaries of 
foreign companies or agents for foreign suppliers.  
 Moreover, the EC believes that it is extremely difficult to determine the real beneficiary of a 
specific transaction.  In one inst ance, a contracting authority of one member State was found to have 
warded a contract for cars through a local subsidia ry, but the car model was actually produced in a 
third country.  
 The EC remains ready to engage in in-depth  discussions to determin e how to better measure 
market penetration by companies from count ries that are Parties to the Agreement. 
 
4. Values 
 All prices are given in Euros, excluding VAT
.  Any comparison between the EU public 
procurement market and the market of any other Pa rties requires being done on a similar statistical 
basis.  The average VAT rate applicable for the EU should be in the area of 13 per cent. 
 
5. Article XV cases 
 The EU is currently refining the data collec tion methodology to be able to fully fulfil its 
obligations under Article XIX.5(c). 
 
6. Article XIX.5(d) 
 The EC has not yet found a consistent method to measure this heading.  It is ready to discuss 
with other Parties on how to measure this heading.  7. Other remarks 
• 2004 data for Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Est onia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, 
Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia is taken as from 1 May, which is the date of entry of these 
countries into the European Union. 
 
• A technical error prevents the EU from submitting,  at this stage, data for EU institutions 
in 2002 and 2006;  reports for these entities on those years will eventually be added at a 
later stage. 
 
• Combined contracts can lead to apparent  mismatches between the GPA classification 
reference used to describe a specific transaction and its categorisation as "Services", "Works", "Supplies" under Annexes 1a/2a/3a. 
 
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