A new law passed and set to take effect from August 29, 2022, is likely to restrict suppliers from Ghana, and other third world countries from gaining access to the EU’s public procurement market.
The new law known as International Procurement Instrument (IPI), provides a mechanism for restricting access to the EU public procurement market to suppliers from countries that do not provide reciprocal access to their own public procurement markets.
The IPI operates by allowing the European Commission to investigate (on its own initiative, or upon an application by an EU Member State or interested EU firm) any third-country measure which is alleged to result in a “serious and recurrent impairment of access” to that country’s public procurement market for EU companies.
Through the IPI, the European Commission has the power to impose an IPI measure if it determines that a third-country’s measure impairs market access.
The IPI measure may take the form of either:
(a) a score adjustment on tenders from the target country up to a maximum of 50%; or
(b) the exclusion of some or all companies from the target country from participation in certain procurement procedures.
The IPI, the Clifford Chance report asserts, can be applied to procurement procedures which are not covered by the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) or EU free trade agreements containing reciprocal procurement access conditions (FTAs).
Ghana has signed several agreements with the EU with the most recent one being the bilateral Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) which provides duty-free and quota-free access for exports to both Ghana and the EU.
At the moment, it is unknown if Ghana has a WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) with the EU, however, Ghana with its EPA with the EU – in that the EPA is a form of free trade agreement- is likely to be protected from the IPI law.
However, this cannot be said with certainty as the only sure way for Ghana to prevent the possibility of having local suppliers from being restricted into the the EU’s public procurement market is to have a WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) with the EU.
Source:norvanreports