Japan Press Weekly

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2015 March 4 - 10 [ECONOMY]

Protect interests of small business sector from WTO agreement: JCP Shiokawa

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives Shiokawa Tetsuya on March 6 demanded that the WTO agreement not be used as an excuse to exclude the small business sector from public procurements at the national and local levels.

Shiokawa cited the Kyoto Prefectural government’s purchase of TV sets for all public high schools. The prefecture made a procurement contract with a major electronics corporation based on the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) which requires that a large volume of public procurement be contracted with a single supplier.

Noting the fact that the WTO agreement hampers local governments from dividing a large size procurement into multiple ones in order to provide business opportunities to local business operators, the JCP representative criticized the GPA for harming the interests of small business operators.

He then referred to the ongoing negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact. Shiokawa pointed out that the TPP will encourage foreign companies to enter into Japan’s public procurement agreements at both the national and local levels. He called for a withdrawal from the TPP talks, saying that local governments have expressed concerns that Japan’s participation in the TPP framework will further decrease small business sector’s opportunities to join in public procurement bids.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in his reply only said that the government does not assume that the TPP will adversely affect small- and medium-sized enterprises.


Past related articles:
> Gov’t should stop promoting prior negotiations for TPP [March 14, 2012]
> TPP opens gov’t procurement to foreign capital (Part 2) [September 22, 2011]
> TPP opens gov’t procurement to foreign capital (Part 1) [September 21, 2011]