The WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) is a “plurilateral” agreement, meaning that it applies to a number of WTO Members, but not to all Members. Accession to the GPA is limited to WTO Members that have expressly signed or subsequently acceded to the GPA. WTO members are not required to join the GPA, but the United States strongly encourages all WTO members to participate in this important agreement. Several countries, including China, Jordan and Moldova, are currently negotiating to join the GPA. The Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) is a plurilateral agreement under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that regulates the purchase of goods and services by the authorities of the Parties to the Agreement on the basis of the principles of openness, transparency and non-discrimination. China has proposed a complete overhaul of its Tendering and Tendering Law (TBL), one of its main government procurement laws and the de facto law that applies to government procurement. The TBL prescribes uniform tendering and tendering procedures for certain categories of procurement projects in China, in particular for construction and construction projects, regardless of the type of entity conducting the contract. The TBL was introduced in 2000, three years before the Government Procurement Law (GPL), the dominant law governing China`s government procurement activities, with the exception of government procurement and projects covered by the TBL. This paper highlights the key elements of the proposed revisions under the TBL in the context of China`s negotiations on accession to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA).
For the full text of the revised GPA and the new annexes setting out the procurements covered by all GPA Parties, see GPA-113. In accordance with Article V of the revised GPA, special and differential treatment for developing countries may be negotiated in the form of transitional measures such as countervailing measures, preferential price programmes, initially higher thresholds and the gradual introduction of facilities by a developing country in the accession process, subject to the agreement of the other Parties and the development needs of the acceding Member. The review focuses on taking quality in relation to price into account when selecting successful offers. It encourages contracting entities to take into account the total life-cycle cost in their public procurement and to select the calls for tenders with the lowest energy consumption and the lowest environmental impact. It adds provisions to prevent the selection of winners solely on the basis of the prize and limits the application of the evaluated method of the lowest bid price to projects with general technical or performance standards or without specific requirements. A bid evaluation committee must reject abnormally low bids if the supplier cannot explain their reasonableness. The proposed revision would remove major infrastructure, utility and other projects that affect public social interests and public safety from the requirement to conduct tenders under the LBL. If such projects are removed from the TBL, they should be subject to the GPL if they are carried out by government-related organizations. Two types of projects would continue to be subject to TBL`s tender requirement: projects that are invested in whole or in part with public or state-funded funds, and projects that use loans or aid from international organizations or foreign governments. The accession process begins with the submission of an application for membership and has two main aspects: negotiations between the acceding member and the parties to the GPA on the offer of GPA coverage and verification of the compatibility of the acceding member`s public procurement legislation with the requirements of the GPA – for example, in terms of transparency, procedural fairness for suppliers and national control. The WTO Secretariat provides technical assistance to assist WTO Members from developing countries who wish to learn more about the GPA and/or join the GPA. Where the candidate countries so wish and wish, other intergovernmental organisations (e.B.
regional development banks) or governance-oriented institutions can also provide technical assistance for accession to the GPA. The Tender Review Body is a body established by States Parties to enable suppliers to challenge irregular government tenders. [5] These bodies are independent and strive to deal with each case promptly […].