Regulatory Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements: the "Singapore" Issues

Provisions in RTAs dealing with investment, competition, trade facilitation and governmentprocurement commonly go beyond provisions in the WTO or, in the case of government procurement,adopt provisions substantially similar to those of the WTO Agreement, but include countries that arenot parties to that Agreement. Moreover, in "going beyond", RTAs often do so in a way that allows considerable flexibility of application allowing participating countries to scale their regionalambitions according to their particular circumstances...