Trade talks that are essentially focused on levelling the tariff structures have increasingly become conscious of the market access barriers being erected through imposition of Non-tariff Measures (NTM). Prominent among the NTMs are technical regulations, that prescribe mandatory safety or quality standards and concurrently regulate the conformity assessment practices that are often more cumbersome than the standards themselves.

Even as the WTO Agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade and Sanitary & Phytosanitary Measures call for a level playing field, the global trend continues to ride on regulatory practices loaded predominantly in favour of domestic manufacturers.

Global standards

Historically, the European Union, the US, other OECD nations and China have been leading in notifying technical regulations. The range is very wide and encompasses entire sectors such as electrical appliances, machinery, toys, construction products, medical devices, boilers, oil & gas equipment, telecom products, transport equipment etc. The US has major and stringent import restrictions on agro products, pharma, telecom equipment, medical devices, toys, electrical appliances and chemicals.

China has consciously built a standards and quality regime that not only matches the European regulations but often surpasses them in several ways. The foregoing information should be an eye opener to those who have raised concerns with the recent Indian government policy on technical regulations. To highlight the comparative status, in the chemicals sector India has still not notified the Draft Chemicals Safety Management Rules (that will support building the national inventory). Similarly, while most of the developed nations and China have adopted the United Nations Globally Harmonized Systems (GHS) for classification of chemicals, India is yet to notify any regulation. The Government of India has notified mandatory standards and BIS certification on 692 products, out of which only 65 are chemical substances or chemical products. These numbers fall far short of much larger and tighter mandatory regimes in the west and even Asia.

Even when the policy to bridge the regulatory gaps was first mooted in 2017 following a study conducted by CII (this writer was directly involved in the study) the key recognition was the uncontrolled dumping of products of sub-standard grades and questionable quality (including unsafe, hazardous products), that not only placed common consumers at risk, but seriously eroded the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry as well as exports that faced regulatory barriers in the importing countries at great cost.

Strategy for standards

What emerged after multiple rounds of government-industry-consumer consultation over a five-year period (2014 to 2018) was a National Strategy on Standards that strongly advocated installing a regulatory framework across product groups and culminated in the policy to use the BIS route in the form of quality control orders (QCOs).

Undoubtedly, enforcement of any new laws brings about implementation issues and the question of balance of interests. The fact is, there is no bar for any overseas manufacturers to obtain BIS certification, provided they fulfil the technical requirements. Importantly though, this arrangement effectively weeds out the low grade / quality supply chains from suspect sources, a lot of which traces its origin to China.

A case to highlight of uncontrolled imports, is the QCO on PVC Resin notified by the Government in February 2024 following a combined effort in developing the Indian standard over 3 years with comprehensive data pooling and amalgamating global practices. For the first time, PVC grades were standardized in a market replete with self-claims and blends of spurious materials.

The PVC resin standard restricts the presence of RVCM content, a known Category 1A carcinogen to a 5-ppm level. Unfortunately, the successive extensions of the notified QCOs have allowed the sub-grade trade route from China to flourish, flooding the market with high RVCM content resin. There is an urgent need to stop this before the health impact starts showing, considering the large-scale use of PVC products in close contact with foodstuff, drinking water and pharmaceuticals.

The writer is a former Director & Head of the National Institute of Training for Standardization (NITS)

Published on June 13, 2025