《Services procurement under the WTO’s》.pdf

World Trade Review (2011), 10: 4, 527–549 f Anirudh Shingal doi:10.1017/S1474745611000309 Services procurement under the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement: whither market access? A N I R U D H S H I N G A L * Senior Research Fellow, WTI and Research Affiliate, CARIS, University of Sussex Abstract: This paper studies the government procurement of services from foreign suppliers by conducting a statistical analysis of data submitted by Japan and Switzerland to the WTO’s Committee on Government Procurement. Using several metrics, the paper examines whether the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) has led to greater market access for foreign suppliers in services procurement. Our results indicate that despite the GPA, the proportions of services contracts awarded to foreigners have declined over time for both countries and that in the absence of this decline, the value of services contracts awarded to foreign firms would have been more than 15 times higher in the case of Japan and nearly 68 times more in the case of Switzerland. We also find that for the same services categories, the Japanese government is not purchasing as much from abroad as its private sector is importing from the rest of the world, a finding that further points to the home-bias in that government’s public purchase decisions. 1. Introduction The rise in total spending by central and local governments was one of the most profound economic changes of the twentieth century (Evenett, 2000). This is consistent with Public Finance theory as propounded by Wagner (1863) and Baumol (1967) – an increase in GDP is accompanied by an increasing role of the state in maintaining law and order, providing essential services such as education and health, and contributing to other significant economic activities. This also means that the government in its various forms –