Ukraine – WTO approves Ukraine’s accession terms for the Government Procurement Agreement

The WTO announced Ukraine is set to join the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) after its accession terms were approved on 11 November, 2015.  The WTO’s Committee on Government Procurement agreed to invite Ukraine to join the GPA based on the terms set out in a draft decision circulated to Parties on 9 October. Ukraine will formally accede to the GPA 30 days after it has deposited its instrument of accession with the WTO.

Ukraine applied for GPA accession in February 2011, less than three years after joining the WTO.  It submitted its first coverage offer in March 2014.

Forty-five WTO members are currently covered by the GPA:  Armenia; Canada; the European Union, with its 28 member states; Hong Kong, China; Iceland; Israel; Japan; Korea; Liechtenstein; Montenegro; the Kingdom of the Netherlands with respect to Aruba; New Zealand; Norway; Singapore; Switzerland; Chinese Taipei; and the United States.

Accession to the GPA requires, in addition to the existence of GPA-compliant national procurement legislation, the reaching of agreement on the terms of participation by each acceding WTO member. This is achieved through negotiations with the existing parties to the Agreement.

The schedule of each party setting out terms of participation contains several annexes which define the party’s commitment with respect to four dimensions of coverage:

• the procuring entities covered by the Agreement
• the goods, services and construction services covered by the Agreement
• the threshold values above which procurement activities are covered by the Agreement; and
• exceptions to the coverage.

Recently, the GPA was revised to modernize certain aspects of its rules and to expand its scope. The revised version of the Agreement came into force in April 2014.

The GPA committee approved the accession terms for Moldova at its previous meeting on 16 September.