Goods & services standards should help in promoting global trade, not act as non-tariff barriers: Commerce Secretary

03 Nov 2023 Evaluate

Calling for harmonization in the standards ecosystem, Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal has said that standards for goods and services should help in promoting global trade and not act as non-tariff barriers. He said that standards should not be considered as non-tariff barriers but as some kind of non-tariff measures which can help in optimal results for both consumers as well as producers. He added ‘If this becomes the right oil for the trade system, I think a lot of trade restrictions will come down in trade and it will help us take the world trade to $30 trillion by 2025 for India’.

He said different countries are setting their own standards and that has a cost for global trade. He further said many times producers and exporters also face difficulty not because of the standards but ‘because of how they get implemented’, and added that there is an important need to have coherence in the workings of standard-setting bodies and collaboration in the compliance ecosystem. He noted ‘Therefore the task before us is how to improve not only standard setting of different products but also how to set up testing ecosystem, how to set up conformity ecosystem and how to see that trade does not suffer because of these standards’. In bilateral treaties, India is touching upon these issues because it feels that there should be a conformity assessment of standards-setting bodies.

He also said ‘Another impression being created in the field of trade…is that if you look at the Global north and global south, you will find that although tariff barriers have come down, trade flows are much easier these days but there is a rise in non-tariff barriers’. He added that standards are supposed to be non-tariff measures and should look at the interest of consumers so that they get the right kind of products. He said ‘But gradually what we are seeing is that non-tariff measures are becoming non-tariff barriers…we need to discuss among ourselves that how standards should not be seen as non-tariff barriers but some kind of non-tariff measures perhaps which can result in optimal output or results for both consumers as well as producers’.

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