Ukraine's Potential Accession to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement: What are the pros and cons?

Abstract

The present paper is dedicated to the problem of accession to the WTO Agreement on Government procurement (GPA) for Ukraine as well as for other acceding countries and the existing Parties of this Agreement. In the light of the recent decision of Ukraine to join GPA, the paper gives an appraisal of its opportunities concerning the accession to the Agreement and puts forward the critical assessment of such decision. Special attention is given to current Ukrainian legislation on government procurement and the main obstacles to Ukraine’s accession to the GPA. The article presents an in-depth analysis of problems and threats in the WTO public procurement system which may affect the functioning of the public procurement market of Ukraine as well as other acceding countries, especially domestic manufactures, and may cause the imbalances in the world trading system. Furthermore, the present article provides the latest statistics, provisional estimates, and framework for WTO Members considering accession.