Indian industry must adopt global standards: Cabinet Secy

Indian industry will find it "extremely difficult" to survive in a highly-competitive international market unless it adopts global standards, Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha said today.
He also blamed "a weak domestic standards regime" for affecting India's capability to find new markets for exports, especially for exporting high-value added products, and said Indian products and services are not perceived on par with the global standards.
"In the new paradigm of trade, Indian industry has no choice but to do business with highly standardized markets. Unless India follows the international best practices, it will be extremely difficult to survive in this highly competitive world," he said at the National Standards Conclave.

Sinha said the new emerging global architecture of trade, in the form of mega-free trade agreements, is also forcing both government and industry to be proactive in setting up the standards regime.
The emerging mega-regionals will, in all likelihood, become major drivers in establishing the rule of standards in global trade, he said, adding the awareness and adoption of standards are relatively low, comparing with other big economies.
"Our standards regime is still at the nascent stage of development... With the growing integration of world economy through several trade agreements, the tariff barriers are slowly vanishing, standards and conformity assessment appeared to be a new form of trade barrier for the exporting countries," he said.

The Cabinet Secretary said even though a number of external factors were responsible for dip in India's exports, "it is noteworthy that India also could not find the new markets".

"A weak domestic standards regime has affected our capability of export considerably in the newer market and more so, when it comes to exporting high-value added products".
In international markets, he said, the standards of Indian products and services are not perceived on par with the global standards.
"As a result, our exporters find the access to international market, in case of new products, very difficult," he said.
He also said that in case of mandatory adoption of standards, there is a concern that the cost of production may increase and Indian producers may lose cost competitiveness in the world market.

"To combat this situation, there is a proposal to the manufacturers that they go up in the production value chain and gain certain quality tag in their produced goods. This will give them desired market access on one hand, and higher revenue on the other," he added.
He also suggested industry to carry out production in a speedy manner, otherwise imports will start happening and it would lose the market completely.
Further, Sinha said that Indian manufacturers today make a wide spectrum of products but very few of them actually demand high value because the large part of production lies at the lower end of supply chain.

Sinha also said: "As we are at the very beginning of
standards regime, this is an advantage for the industry to adopt the best system that facilitates their exports. In this way, we will move towards a progressive and futuristic standards regime".
Speaking at the event, Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said that there is a need to empower and strengthen regulators.
"We need to invest and empower them. Without that, we will not be able to get the confidence of world and our consumers. We also need clear demarcation of roles for regulators," she said, adding that the Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) cannot set standards for every sector.

She said the way "we shape our global standards is patchy and we are not fully engaged with the world in terms of setting up of standards, that is why our voices are not heard".
The Secretary called for working on a strong roadmap to set up standards regime in India as "we need an entire ecosystem of standards and conformity assesments... Till now we have paper standards, so we need a roadmap for the coming years".
The conclave was organised by the Department of Commerce, in collaboration with CII, Bureau of Indian Standards and National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies.