India at 5th position in accreditation systems in the world: Report

India’s national accreditation system under the Quality Council of India (QCI) has been ranked fifth out of 184 countries in the world, the commerce and industry ministry said on Thursday.

In 2020, India was ranked ninth in the world in accreditation.

The statement came in the backdrop of the Global Quality Infrastructure Index (GQII) 2021 that was released in December, 2022. The GQII ranks the 184 economies in the world on the basis of the quality infrastructure (QI).

“This is the sign of a New India in the Amrit Kaal with a quality first approach. India’s accreditation system is the youngest among the three QI pillars in India, and we have jumped to global fifth within a year in these rankings….Time is ripe to provide more support to our businesses to pursue their quality journey in mission mode,” said Jaxay Shah, QCI Chairperson said in a statement.

According to the government, the rise in India’s accreditation ranking can be attributed to the ‘steady growth of conformity assessment bodies (CABs)’ under the national accreditation system. These include testing and medical labs, product certification bodies, and management systems certification bodies. 

India’s overall quality infrastructure ranking continued to be in 10th position as in 2020. The standardisation system under the Bureau of India Standards (BIS), however, was at ninth position, down from 7th position in 2020. Similarly, in terms of metrology, the rank fell to 21st position from 19th a year ago.

QI is the technical backbone for international trade, with metrology, standardisation, accreditation and conformity assessment services providing reliability and trust between trading partners. In India, the National Physical Laboratory under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (NPL-CSIR) is the national metrology institute, BIS is the national standards body and the constituent national accreditation boards under QCI support are the custodians of the national accreditation system.

The GQII rankings are published and presented post-facto for each year based on the data collected till the end of that year. The 2021 rankings are based on data till the end of December 2021, collected and analysed through 2022. It is an initiative on metrology, standardisation, accreditation and related services, supported by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany.