Expansion of the Government Procurement Agreement : Time to Concentrate on Depth as Well as Width

WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) was designed to liberalize and expand trade in government procurement. Revised GPA was implemented in 1996 and the latest revision was completed (but not yet implemented) in 2012, but as a plurilateral agreement. Since the end of the UR, there has been attempts by various WTO members to liberalize trade in the government procurement market - through an expansion of Parties who are signatories to GPA, and through a negotiated agreement on transparency in government procurement. The attempt to expand the Parties who are signatories to the GPA - attempt to increase the width of the coverage of the agreement - has been somewhat successful, but I argue that the goal should be to further liberate the government procurement markets of the current Party members - to reduce thresholds and other barriers which limit market access even to other GPA members, in other words, to increase the depth of coverage. Taking cue from Korea's FTA, I propose a two-level liberalization of the government procurement market under the GPA: A “light” level which would be the same as the current level of liberalization; and a “deep” level with lower thresholds and less exemptions. I argue that, as seen in Korea, with FTAs, many GPA Parties already have multiple levels of liberalization (i.e, spaghetti-bowl effect of FTAs), but by limiting the levels of liberalization to two, we can seek the best of deep liberalization but reduce the spaghetti-bowl effect