The International Agreement on Government Procurement

GAO reviewed the government's implementation of the multilateral Agreement on Government Procurement, which was meant to limit signatory governments' use of discriminatory procurement practices as barriers to trade.

GAO found that, while the agreement was an important step toward less restrictive trade, it has had less commercial value than originally anticipated because: (1) foreign signatory governments opened a smaller value of procurements to international competition than was projected; (2) some foreign signatory governments did not comply with the agreement; (3) previous agreements and national practices had already opened to American competition procurements covered by the agreement; and (4) American firms were unable to competitively sell products demanded by foreign governments. The U.S. Government opened a greater value of procurements to foreign competition than did all other signatories. GAO also found that the Department of Commerce's efforts to familiarize American firms with the agreement were ineffective because: (1) budgetary constraints and an internal reorganization hampered such efforts; (2) Commerce did not make an effort to reach the firms most capable of benefiting from the agreement through their overseas representatives; and (3) of inefficiencies in Commerce's Trade Opportunities Program (TOP). In addition, GAO found that: (1) embassies devoted little time to efforts to monitor compliance with the agreement because they were unsure about what actions to take regarding noncompliance; and (2) information collection difficulties have prevented the U.S. Government from fully assessing the benefits of the agreement.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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