The gains in market access result from numerous government entities (ministries and agencies) being added to the scope of the GPA and from new services and other areas of public procurement activities being included in its expanded coverage.
The Agreement’s text has been streamlined and modernized to include, for example, standards related to the use of electronic procurement tools. Other changes include a new provision relating to the prevention of corrupt practices in the parties’ procurement systems. The revised GPA also reinforces the scope provided by the original Agreement to promote the conservation of natural resources and to protect the environment through the application of appropriate technical specifications.
Two-thirds of the parties to the GPA were required to accept the Protocol of Amendment before the revised GPA could enter into force. This condition was met when Israel approved the Protocol on 7 March.
The revised Agreement is now in force for the first ten parties to have accepted the Protocol of Amendment. Listed in order of acceptance, these are Liechtenstein, Norway, Canada, Chinese Taipei, the United States, Hong Kong (China), the European Union, Iceland, Singapore and Israel. The revision will come into force for Japan on 16 April 2014.
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The revised Agreement also incorporates improved transitional measures to facilitate accession to it by developing and least-developed economies. In addition to the 43 WTO members that already participate in the GPA (including the European Union’s 28 member states), ten other WTO members — Albania, China, Georgia, Jordan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Oman and Ukraine — have applied to join. A further five WTO members — the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Mongolia, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia — have provisions regarding accession to the Agreement in their respective WTO accession protocols.
