Foreign government procurement is worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year and offers significant potential opportunities for Canadian exporters. Public procurement obligations in international trade agreements help ensure that Canadian suppliers of goods and services are treated in an open, transparent and non-discriminatory manner when selling to governments outside Canada. In addition to suppliers, open public procurement benefits governments and taxpayers by increasing competition, expanding the choice of available goods and services and, importantly, reducing costs. GPA membership is limited to WTO members who have specifically signed or subsequently joined the GPA. WTO members are not required to join the GPA, but the United States urges all WTO members to participate in this important agreement. Several countries, including China, Jordan and Moldova, are negotiating GPA membership. Canada is also working on the entry into force of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union (EU). Click here for an overview of public procurement and the text of the public procurement chapter containing Canada`s market access offer and THE EU market access offer. The revised agreement expands the markets covered by the GPA to provide U.S. products, services and suppliers with new opportunities to participate in centralized and sub-centralized procurement in other GPA parties. The revised agreement also provides for a substantial improvement in the text of the treaty by modernising the text to take into account current procurement practices and to clarify its commitments. The revised agreement enters into force for the parties who accepted it on the 30th day after it was tabled by two-thirds of the parties to the current agreement and, subsequently, for each of the parties that accept it on the 30th day following its adoption. The Public Procurement Agreement (GPA) is a multi-lateral agreement, under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which governs the purchase of goods and services by the public authorities of the contracting parties, based on the principles of openness, transparency and non-discrimination.

The GPA`s fundamental objective is to open mutual public procurement between its parties. Following several rounds of negotiations, the GPA parties have opened purchase activities valued at an estimated $1.7 trillion per year for international competition (i.e., suppliers of construction products, services or services). The WTO Public Procurement Agreement is a “multilateral” agreement that means it applies to a number of WTO members, but not all members.