In order to make an effective standards regulatory regime in India, the Commerce Ministry has started an exercise to formulate a national strategy for standardisation of products and services, circulating a draft of the strategy to seek stakeholders’ views till end of March 2018.
In a view of rapid growth of the economy, its size and emerging relevance in global trade, the ministry has expressed need to establish a robust quality infrastructure in India with a harmonised, dynamic, and mature standards ecosystem for goods. It added that this would fuel economic growth and enhance the ‘Made in India’ label.
The ministry highlighted that standards have been widely recognized as catalysts for technical development, industrial growth, well-being of the society and more recently for convergence of new and emerging technologies, and countries are accordingly evolving strategies to synergize standardization work with technological, social and economic development at the national level as well as to influence global standardization efforts.
The draft strategy has various key objectives like positioning standards as a key driver of all economic activities relating to goods and services, providing level playing field to domestic industry and developing a comprehensive ecosystem in India for standards development taking into account the diversity of interests and expertise available.