Cabinet secretary Ajit Seth on Wednesday rued India lacking a proper legislative instrument to notify and administer technical regulations.
?Despite the crucial role that standards play in facilitating transactions, India does not have a standards-driven culture. This has implications for both domestic and international sales. It is not surprising that Indian exporters have to incur high costs in order to comply with standards and technical regulations in main foreign markets,? Seth said at a conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and commerce ministry on the role of standards in international trade.
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) formulates standards for industrial products and offers certification and testing services, but there isn’t a legal framework for the same.
The Cabinet secretary’s statement has come at a time when India is faced with strong barriers to trade, the commerce ministry is preparing itself to meet the various sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT) requirements of its various trading partners.
With developing countries, including India, having suggested that developed countries are using the SPS and TBT measures for protectionist purposes by prescribing overly stringent trade restrictive standards, the ministry has initiated a discussion with different stakeholders to handle this protectionism.
Of the 18,000 notifications issued under these agreements from various countries, regulations issued from India numbered only 93. Even these few were the topic of intense debate.
In fact, recently, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in report titled ?Report on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures 2014?, enumerated its concerns and the problems it faced while trading with India while trading dairy products, pork, poultry, swine, and pet food, pulses, wheat and barley.