The Indian industry, both exporters and experts included, needs to debate and find ways to deal with stringent private standards in order to access lucrative markets of the world and boost shipments, a top Government official on Friday said.
These private standards, mainly meant for sectors such as food, agriculture, textiles and agro-forestry products, are fixed by multi-national companies and are often more stringent than those followed by respective Governments, which jacks up the compliance cost for domestic suppliers, particularly MSMEs from developing countries.
Chances are high that the Governments may also follow suit and step up their own standards in line with those of MNCs, which may make it difficult for exporters from developing countries like India to access such markets.
“This is imperative for us to look very seriously at a hub, at a place where we can actively debate these issues and find ways forward to support our domestic industry to access markets. Private standards are emerging as significant in the world trade,” Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said.
Standards refer to product quality, which are gradually replacing tariffs in international trade as Customs duties on products are in decline. These standards, she said, do raise a number of issues mostly due to the nature of their ownership and development process and sometimes tend to become barriers for market access. Teaotia sees it as a challenge for exporters and countries to comply with these standards ‘if you want to (get to) that market’.