Negotiators made significant progress on coverage and enforcement but were not successful in expanding membership in the Government Procurement Agreement. Coverage objectives were substantially achieved, although commitments contain many exceptions for services.
Public procurement represents a major source of demand for goods and services in most countries.
And improving developing countries' access to global procurement markets could help induce governments to adopt multilateral rules, if those could be shown to be in their interests. They suggest the pursuit of tariffication as one avenue through which the Agreement might be expanded to cover all WTO members. Return to Working Papers homepage.