New World Trade Order a challenge to industry

New World Trade Order, to be effective from January 1, 2005 under the WTO trade regime, poses a serious challenge to our industry in terms of quality of products and services in accordance with the international standards.
In this respect two agreements including Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary measures (SPS) accepted under the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) are of great importance to the future socio-economic development of our country.
It was the theme of a presentation and discussion on effect of quality products and services on our economy, exports, health and environment and the role of media, held here on Thursday.
The experts besides making a detailed presentation on the subject shared the views with media people in an open discussion and responded to the queries.
Both these agreements emphasise the need for harmonising the national quality infrastructure to reduce technical barriers to trade at the same time these agreements allow member states to take non-discriminatory steps necessary for meeting the requirements of environment, health and safety.
These agreements ensure the supply of safe and quality product and services in the market - a subject that is ignored and down played in most of the developing countries including Pakistan, they added.
Our food items particularly wheat, onion, honey, mangoes etc have been refused even in underdeveloped countries like Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Philippines, because they do not meet the required specifications and standards.
Similarly, our gray cotton cloth and yarn, which are our main export items, do not attract good prices in the international market because we are unable to maintain quality right from plucking, ginning to the spinning stage and so is the case with many other products, they said.
Under this programme more than 500 seminars/courses will be held in the country, in collaboration with the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, trade and industry associations, academic institutions and other government and private institutions like Smeda, NPO, EPB etc, they added.