Taiwan’s accession to the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) will have little impact on domestic businesses in the initial stages, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday.
The commission said Taiwan was already an open market for foreign bidders and suppliers before the country was admitted as a full member of the GPA on Tuesday.
Between 2005 and last year, foreign bidders won 26.87 percent of all contracts on public procurement projects, reflecting the fact that the country’s public procurement markets are already “very open,” commission officials said.
The officials quoted international tallies as indicating that foreign suppliers won 13.8 percent of the public procurement contracts in Japan in 2002, while the figure relating to the US for 1999 was 5.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the WTO Committee on Government Procurement’s formal approval on Tuesday’s accession of Taiwan to the GPA — under the name of Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu — also gave Taiwanese companies open access to public contracts in the 40 other GPA economies, the officials said.
GPA accession offers local suppliers access to the US government procurement market, worth in excess of US$300 billion annually, they said.
The GPA was hammered out during the WTO Tokyo Round of negotiations and entered into force Jan. 1, 1981. Its purpose is to open up as many public contracts as possible to international competition. It is designed to make laws, regulations, procedures and practices regarding government procurement more transparent and to ensure they do not protect domestic products or suppliers, or discriminate against foreign products or suppliers.
The European Commission on Tuesday gave a “hearty welcome” to Taiwan’s GPA accession, the second time in nine days that the commission had welcomed Taiwan’s accession.
“This GPA accession offers the EU and Taiwan’s suppliers access to each other’s public procurement markets, “ said Catherine Ashton, the European commissioner for trade.
Charlie McCreevy, another commissioner in charge of internal markets, said that it has always been one of the European Commission’s goals to have the number of GPA economies increased, because an enlarged GPA grouping means European suppliers would have broader access to Taiwanese government projects.
The European Commission said Taiwan’s government procurement market was more than 120 billion euros (US$155.5 billion) over the past 10 years, with European companies taking a 3 percent market share worth about 3.7 billion euros.
STIMULUS PLANS: An official said that China would increase funding from special treasury bonds and expand another program focused on key strategic sectors China is to sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds this year to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official told a news conference yesterday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalize its faltering economy. Special treasury bonds would be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da (袁達), deputy secretary-general of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. “The size of ultra-long special government bond funds will be sharply increased this year to intensify and expand the implementation of the two new initiatives,” Yuan said. Under the program launched last year, consumers can
Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp said they are leaving a global climate-banking group, becoming the latest Wall Street lenders to exit the coalition in the past month. In a statement, Citigroup said while it remains committed to achieving net zero emissions, it is exiting the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). Bank of America said separately on Tuesday that it is also leaving NZBA, adding that it would continue to work with clients on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The banks’ departure from NZBA follows Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Wells Fargo & Co. The largest US financial institutions are under increasing pressure
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
FUTURE TECH: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would give the keynote speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which is also expected to highlight autonomous vehicles Gadgets, robots and vehicles imbued with artificial intelligence (AI) would once again vie for attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, as vendors behind the scenes would seek ways to deal with tariffs threatened by US president-elect Donald Trump. The annual Consumer Electronics Show opens formally in Las Vegas tomorrow, but preceding days are packed with product announcements. AI would be a major theme of the show, along with autonomous vehicles ranging from tractors and boats to lawn mowers and golf club trollies. “Everybody is going to be talking about AI,” Creative Strategies Inc analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “From fridges to ovens
RSS