Taiwan’s accession to the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) will have little impact on domestic businesses in the initial stages, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday.
The commission said Taiwan was already an open market for foreign bidders and suppliers before the country was admitted as a full member of the GPA on Tuesday.
Between 2005 and last year, foreign bidders won 26.87 percent of all contracts on public procurement projects, reflecting the fact that the country’s public procurement markets are already “very open,” commission officials said.
The officials quoted international tallies as indicating that foreign suppliers won 13.8 percent of the public procurement contracts in Japan in 2002, while the figure relating to the US for 1999 was 5.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the WTO Committee on Government Procurement’s formal approval on Tuesday’s accession of Taiwan to the GPA — under the name of Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu — also gave Taiwanese companies open access to public contracts in the 40 other GPA economies, the officials said.
GPA accession offers local suppliers access to the US government procurement market, worth in excess of US$300 billion annually, they said.
The GPA was hammered out during the WTO Tokyo Round of negotiations and entered into force Jan. 1, 1981. Its purpose is to open up as many public contracts as possible to international competition. It is designed to make laws, regulations, procedures and practices regarding government procurement more transparent and to ensure they do not protect domestic products or suppliers, or discriminate against foreign products or suppliers.
The European Commission on Tuesday gave a “hearty welcome” to Taiwan’s GPA accession, the second time in nine days that the commission had welcomed Taiwan’s accession.
“This GPA accession offers the EU and Taiwan’s suppliers access to each other’s public procurement markets, “ said Catherine Ashton, the European commissioner for trade.
Charlie McCreevy, another commissioner in charge of internal markets, said that it has always been one of the European Commission’s goals to have the number of GPA economies increased, because an enlarged GPA grouping means European suppliers would have broader access to Taiwanese government projects.
The European Commission said Taiwan’s government procurement market was more than 120 billion euros (US$155.5 billion) over the past 10 years, with European companies taking a 3 percent market share worth about 3.7 billion euros.
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