Brazil's application to join the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA): Professor Sue Arrowsmith contributes to the Inter-American Development Bank programme to prepare Brazil for accession and implementation

In 2020 Brazil applied to join the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) of the WTO, an event described by the Chair of the WTO’s Government Procurement Committee as “historic”, with Brazil being the first Latin American country to make such an application.  

Following on from an extensive series of webinars organised during the summer of 2020 by Professor Arrowsmith as PPRG Director in collaboration with the Institute of Public Law, Brazil, which were broadcast to large audiences on You Tube, Professor Arrowsmith has more recently contributed to  two programmes of the Inter-American Development Bank  that aim to assist Brazil in the accession and implementation process. Her presentations to a large group of Government regulators and officers, “Implementing the GPA into a national procurement system: insights from international experience”, delivered in July 2020 and May 2021, drew upon her extensive knowledge and research of both the GPA and of procurement systems globally to explain what flexibilities the GPA offers to national regulatory system and the different options that exist for implementation in the Brazilian context.