HARMONISING PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE SADC

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-109
Author(s):  
Stephen De la Harpe
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
Regional Competition ◽  
Model Law ◽  
Opening Up

The promotion of international trade is seen as one of the important instruments to ensure development in developing nations and regions. The history of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the drafting of many regional and similar international trade agreements are evidence of this. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is no exception.1 It is therefore strange that many states that are members of the WTO and actively encourage the opening up of international borders to free trade do not include public procurement2 in such free trade arrangements. This is particularly evident in developing states. If the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), which is a plurilateral agreement, is considered it is clear that many states do not wish to open their internal markets to competition in the public procurement sphere. It is therefore not surprising that public procurement has been described as the last rampart of state protectionism (Ky, 2012). Public procurement is an important segment of trade in any country (Arrowsmith & Davies, 1998). It is estimated that public procurement represents between 10% and 15% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of developed countries and up to 25% of GDP in developing states (Wittig, 1999). Unfortunately, governments often expect private industry to open up national markets for international competition but do not lead the way. Except for the limited use of pooled procurement,3 no specific provision is at present made for the harmonisation and integration of public procurement in the SADC. In view of the proximity of the member states, the interdependency of their economies and the benefits that can be derived from opening up their boundaries to regional competition in public procurement, the possibility of harmonisation and deeper integration in this sphere needs to be given more attention. The importance of public procurement in international trade and regional integration is twofold: first, it forms a substantial part of trade with the related economic and developmental implications; secondly, it is used by governments as an instrument to address socio-economic issues. Public procurement spending is also important because of its potential influence on human rights, including aspects such as the alleviation of poverty, the achievement of acceptable labour standards and environmental goals, and similar issues (McCrudden, 1999). In this article the need to harmonise public procurement in the SADC in order to open up public procurement to regional competition, some of the obstacles preventing this, and possible solutions are discussed. Reference is made to international instruments such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the Model Law on Public Procurement and the GPA. In particular, the progress made in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) with regard to the harmonisation of public procurement, which was based on the Model Law, will be used to suggest possible solutions to the problem of harmonising public procurement in the SADC.

Ökologische Aspekte im öffentlich-rechtlichen Beschaffungswesen

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Steengrafe
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
German Law ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
European Law ◽  
Environmental Criteria ◽  
The Government ◽  
Model Law ◽  
The Government Procurement

The awarding of public contracts is of considerable economic importance and for this reason can be used to promote environmental concerns. The present work examines whether environmental criteria may be taken into account in the context of public procurement. To answer this question, the Government Procurement Agreement and the UNICTRAL Model Law on Public Procurement are considered at the level of international law. In European law, the primary as well as the relevant secondary law requirements and, in German law, the Cartel and Budget Procurement Law are assessed. This analysis also includes the interactions between the three levels.

Migration, Globalization, and Xenophobia in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-37
Author(s):  
O. Damola Adejumo-Ayibiowu
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Migration Pattern ◽  
Global Village ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
The World ◽  
Opening Up

Globalization integrates the whole world into a global village. The opening up of economies to international trade is expected to lead to growth and poverty reduction. However, the benefits of globalization have been disproportionately skewed towards developed economies. Despite opening its economies to foreign goods and integrating to the global market, Africa remains the poorest region in the world. Xenophobia in Africa has particularly been a major concern as African migrants within the continent have been experiencing various forms of hostilities and xenophobic attacks. Many authors agree that globalization and economic inequality contribute to this trend. This chapter analyzes from an Afrocentric perspective, the various social, economic, and historical context in which globalization and other European capitalist quests in Africa affect migration pattern in the continent and contribute to xenophobia in Africa. This chapter provides an Afrocentric critique of the idea of globalization which mainly promotes free trade and capital but restricts the movement of African labour.

The Greek “Society for the Freedoms of Trade” (1865–67): Rise, Activities, Decline

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-398
Author(s):  
Michalis Psalidopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Commercial Policy ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
National Economic ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
National Economic Policy

The 150th celebration of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was a major stimulus for new publications on the issue of free trade versus protection, a question that dominated economic policy agendas all over Europe in the nineteenth century. Original texts dating from that period were again made public (Kadish 1996, Schonhardt-Bailey 1997), the works of Richard Cobden became available (Cain 1995), and Douglas A. Irwin's book (1996) and Anthony Howe's treatise (1997) can be seen as the “cosmopolitan” answers to older (Semmel 1970) and contemporary (Magnusson 1994 and Wendler 1996) defenses of a “national” economic policy. This literature, however, as well as conferences on the reception of free trade (Marrison 1998), concentrated on the commercial policy of the most economically advanced nations, leaving completely out of scope discussions, debates and economic policy dilemmas related to international trade in other, less-developed countries.

scholarly journals Government Procurement with Strings Attached: The Uneven Control of Offsets by the World Trade Organization and Regional Trade Agreements

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-321
Author(s):  
David COLLINS
Keyword(s):  
Public Procurement ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Commercial Markets ◽  
Procurement Contracts ◽  
Harmful Effects ◽  
Wto Agreements

AbstractThis paper explores the practice of governments imposing domestic content-based requirements known as “offsets” on suppliers in order to secure public procurement contracts. Known to cause distortions in international trade, offsets are forbidden under the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement and in the procurement chapters of several RTAs, although these restrictions have severe limitations with full offset prohibitions only accepted by a handful of developed countries. Given the sensitivity of procurement policy and the need to stimulate local economies, Asian countries in particular show an unwillingness to address offsets in their international agreements. While other WTO agreements restrain the use of local content rules, these regimes are ill-suited to control the harmful effects of offsets in a procurement context because of their focus on traditional commercial markets. The paper suggests that an enlargement of offset prohibitions would be advisable given the expected expansion of global procurement markets commensurate with economic development.

scholarly journals IMPLEMENTATION OF FOREIGN EXPERIENCE IN GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT INTO THE NATIONAL ECONOMY OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azamat Akramov ◽  
◽  
Rano Isakovna Mardanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Economy ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
The Republic ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Procurement System

The experience of Western countries with a developed market infrastructure shows that the public procurement system naturally became an integral part of the sphere of internal commodity exchange of certain types of products and services and one of the mechanisms for maintaining competition and a liberal way of doing business. The objective basis for the existence and progressive development of the public procurement system in the national economy of many countries is the fact that in the process of fulfilling their target functions, individual government departments and organizational structures of any of them are forced to face the problem of material and technical support both for the implementation of state and local programs, and for the implementation of their current activities. As a rule, it is solved by purchasing the necessary material and intangible resources, goods, works and services through purchases, called state, in the process of specially organized competitive bidding. The purpose of this article is to show the experience of developed countries in the implementation of public procurement.

The Law and Political Economy of International Trade Agreements

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Trebilcock
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Wide Range

While economists overwhelmingly favor free trade, even unilateral free trade, because of the gains realizable from specialization and the exploitation of comparative advantage, in fact international trading relations are structured by a complex body of multilateral and preferential trade agreements. The article outlines the case for multilateral trade agreements and the non-discrimination principle that they embody, in the form of both the Most Favored Nation principle and the National Treatment principle, where non-discrimination has been widely advocated as supporting both geopolitical goals (reducing economic factionalism) and economic goals (ensuring the full play of theories of comparative advantage undistorted by discriminatory trade treatment). Despite the virtues of multilateral trade agreements, preferential trade agreements (PTAs), authorized from the outset under GATT, have proliferated in recent years, even though they are inherently discriminatory between members and non-members, provoking vigorous debates as to whether (a) PTAs are trade-creating or trade-diverting; (b) whether they increase transaction costs in international trade; and (c) whether they undermine the future course of multilateral trade liberalization. A further and similarly contentious derogation from the principle of non-discrimination under the multilateral system is Special and Differential Treatment for developing countries, where since the mid-1950s developing countries have been given much greater latitude than developed countries to engage in trade protectionism on the import side in order to promote infant industries, and since the mid-1960s on the export side have benefited from non-reciprocal trade concessions by developed countries on products of actual or potential export interest to developing countries. Beyond debates over the strengths and weaknesses of multilateral trade agreements and the two major derogations therefrom, further debates surround the appropriate scope of trade agreements, and in particular the expansion of their scope in recent decades to address divergences or incompatibilities across a wide range of domestic regulatory and related policies that arguably create frictions in cross-border trade and investment and hence constitute an impediment to it. The article goes on to consider contemporary fair trade versus free trade debates, including concerns over trade deficits, currency manipulation, export subsidies, misappropriation of intellectual property rights, and lax labor or environmental standards. The article concludes with a consideration of the case for a larger scope for plurilateral trade agreements internationally, and for a larger scope for active labor market policies domestically to mitigate transition costs from trade.

Reforming The Laws On Public Procurement In The Developing World: The Example Of Kenya

2005 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-650
Author(s):  
Victor Mosoti
Keyword(s):  
Public Procurement ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Ministry Of Health ◽  
Procurement Process ◽  
The Government ◽  
Model Law ◽  
The Government Procurement

Kenya is one of the countries that are currently in the process of preparing a new law on government procurement as part of the anti-corruption efforts of a new democratically elected government which came into power in December 2002. Whereas it may be too early to judge the commitment of the new government to meaningful and consistent anti-corruption initiatives, one may already discern either a definite unwillingness to move forward with serious reforms or an implicit acquiescence towards corrupt practices, particularly in the government procurement process. In this paper, we shall examine Kenya's government procurement laws, and their practical application. We focus on two recent examples of the procurement process, one by a government ministry and the other by a parastatal body. The first example of application we shall look at is the controversy over the procurement of HIV-Aids testing equipment by the Ministry of Health, and the second is the procurement of cranes by the Kenya Ports Authority. We shall end with a brief examination of the proposed Public Procurement and Disposal Bill (2003)l which is currently before the Kenyan parliament and how it may revolutionalize the government procurement process in Kenya. This Bill has already received the approval of the Cabinet of Ministers and is due for the second reading in Parliament.2 Despite the Government having stated its commitment to have the bill enacted, the bill has not been passed yet.3 In the last substantive part of the paper, we assess the relevant international agreements and standards such as the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement and the WTO's Agreement on Government Procurement, and also highlight the regional procurement law.

SME Participation in Government Procurement Markets

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Nicholas ◽  
Anna Caroline Müller
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
Effective Application ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Policies And Measures ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Model Law

This chapter considers policy measures to increase the participation of SMEs in government procurement and their potential economic and social policy benefits. It considers the scale and importance of government procurement, and barriers to SME access to these markets. While some SME support policies are often considered to run counter to fundamental goals of government procurement (notably preference policies that may reduce competition and transparency), the chapter explains that many SME policies in fact support efficient and effective government procurement. It explores the synergies between such SME policies and measures designed to ensure cross-border access to government procurement markets. It considers relevant provisions in the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement, and concludes that their recent revisions to promote transparency and effectiveness in the pursuit of these policies are welcome, but that further work to ensure their effective application in practice is needed.

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