Research On The Main Issues Of Government Procurement

Nowadays, the expenditures on government procurement approximately account for ten percent or even more percent of GDP in each country. The importance of government procurement is obvious. Therefore, government procurement deserves our exhaustive research.The scope of procurement entities is a disputable question. The main topic of dispute concentrates on weather companies should be regarded as government procurement entities. The law in China doesn't regard companies financed by financial funds as procurement entities. The legislators maintained that the inclusion of companies as procurement entities would interfere their freedom of business, which has some persuasion. However, the legislation in EU uses different standard, the Public Function Standard on this issue, then, some companies with public functions are included in procurement entities. The use of Public Function Standard is a trend in the world and in some way Public Function Standard is superior to Finance Resource Standard. Therefore, the legislators in China should consider this issue more cautiously. Another disputation concentrates on that government procurement actions are civil, administrative or economical actions. The point of view that government procurement actions are economical is more persuasive.Scientific and efficient government procurement systems are helpful in saving financial funds, minimizing rent-seeking in the market, guaranteeing competition in the market, maintaining the unification of market. Government can avail itself of procurement systems in promoting the development of drawback areas and minority occupied areas, protecting environment, accelerating employment and combating all sorts of discrimination in employment. Because of the all-around functions of government procurement, many countries use government procurement as a tool in achieving the purpose of their governments. However, the use of government procurement as a tool also brings disputation. Under certain circumstances, providers of government procurement are burdened with some social and environmental obligations, which include negative obligations and positive obligations. Under negative obligations, providers are required to abide by the laws. Under positive obligations, providers are required to do more than abide by the laws. They have to contribute more in improving employment and environment, such as increase the employment percentage of women, minority people and handicapped people year after year. Inevitably, the enforcement of policies in government procurement would bring some side effects to providers, and providers in EU and the U.S. are strongly against the adoption of positive obligations by their governments. Because of the above-mentioned pressure, the implementation of positive obligations is becoming more flexible. The debate on the adoption of positive obligations becomes hotter, too. As regards to China, the adoption of positive obligations is constructive, for it can improve the records of law implementation in social and environmental aspects and it can also improve the status of uneven burden of social obligation on companies.The use of public policies in government procurement does not cause too many controversies, if the country doesn't become a member of international treaty in the area of governmentprocurement. However, things will change after the country has the membership of international treaty, such as Government Procurement Agreement. On the one hand, Countries use public policies in government procurement to regulate, and in some cases, the procurement policies are beneficial to domestic providers and adverse to foreign providers, which we call discriminative procurement policies. On the other hand, Government Procurement Agreement forbids the adoption of discriminative procurement policies of member countries, and requires them to treat equally foreign providers and domestic providers. So, the use of public policies in member countries is no doubt contradictory to the main aims of GPA. What we can do to deal wi...