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Acceding to the domestic footwear industry’s request, the Centre has postponed the implementation of quality control orders by a year to July 1, 2022. The order makes it compulsory for manufacturers, importers and traders to obtain Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) licence ‘standard mark’ for their products.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, through separate orders on June 30 said it has been decided to amend the date of implementation of the Quality Control (2020) orders to July 1, 2022, for footwear made from all rubber and all polymeric material and its components and leather and other material from the earlier date of July 1 2021.
For personal protective equipment footwear, the date is January 1, 2022.
“The government is very serious about its intention to enforce standards for a larger number of manufactured products and also keep a check on cheap and inferior quality imports. But, given the difficult times the industry is going through because of the pandemic situation, it has to be sensitive towards its constraints,” an official tracking the matter told BusinessLine .
The Commerce & Industry Ministry identified 371 products in early 2020, where quality norms needed to be enforced. It then short-listed it to 252 by excluding items on which standards existed or were not required, in order to fast-track the framing of quality standards.
However, since the quality standards have to be implemented for both domestic producers and foreign suppliers, local producers are finding it difficult to meet all the procedures especially with Covid-19 disruptions.
“The quality control order should not be implemented before seeing the capability of the industry. Most of the domestic manufacturers are MSME units who need to be educated on how to produce goods that can pass the BIS test. Right now they will fail the test miserably,” said M Rafeeque Ahmed, President, Confederation of Indian Footwear Industries.
“We don’t know right now whether one year is sufficient time. But we will certainly try our best to educate the industry on the necessary requirements within the given time frame,” Ahmed said.
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