Introduction to the chapter

Government procurement – the purchase of goods, construction services and other services required by government bodies – accounts for a substantial proportion of GDP, and it is well recognized that discrimination in this area (intentional or otherwise), as well as other practices, creates significant barriers to trade. Thus government procurement is of great potential interest for international trade regimes, including the WTO. However, dealing with government procurement was not generally a priority in the early phase of the multilateral trading system, nor in early regional and bilateral free trade agreements. Rather, the initial efforts of those responsible for negotiating these arrangements tended to focus on more conventional trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas, both because these were perceived as more important (and their removal a necessary initial step for access to government markets in any case) and because of the particular sensitivity of government procurement. As other trade barriers have diminished, however, the WTO, in common with many other regimes, has increasingly turned its attention to opening up public markets: this is evidenced clearly by chapter 20 of this volume which examines procurement provisions in regional trade agreements notified to the WTO since 2000. Most recently, the importance of government procurement has been enhanced by the increased importance of public infrastructure investment and other procurement activities as an aspect of world economic activity in the context of the recent economic crisis and as a consequence of continuing high growth and, consequently, infrastructure demand in emerging economies such as China and India.