The importance of national standards with international standards was highlighted at the Second International Conference & Exhibition on 'Quality and Excellence for Exports' held in Cairo from October 24 to 26 under the auspices of Ministry of Trade & Industry and organised by Egyptian Organisation for Standardisation & Quality (EOS), the national standards body of Egypt.
Abdul Ghaffar Soomro, Director-General, Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), represented Pakistan. Chairing the session on 'International and regional applications for standards and quality systems', Soomro said that globalisation offered both challenges and opportunities to all countries across the world. Benefits of globalisation can best be availed through standardisation and excellence of quality for export, he said.
Talking to Business Recorder on return from Cairo here on Wednesday, he said that he attended the conference on the invitation of his counterpart, Dr Engineer Mahmoud Eisa, President of EOS, to join the celebrations in connection with joining International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO) based in Geneva.
Over 30 countries participated in this conference which was inaugurated by Dr Ahmed Nazif, Prime Minister of Egypt. The main topic was international and regional applications for standards and quality systems.
Soomro said that globalisation was becoming order of the day and information technology (IT) was making it a reality in people's lives. Although WTO provides level playing field to its 150 member countries, despite the overall increase in the volume of international trade, the shares of developing countries have not increased proportionately, or in absolute terms.
The Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary (SPS) measures, the two most important agreements under WTO, clearly lay down the emphasis on the adoption of international standards, or their harmonisation with national standards. Pakistan's exports could have excess to international market provided its products met the set standards and presented quality.
The Egyptian standards are the certified technical legislation that are applied upon the approval of all the concerned bodies without breaching their impartiality and transparency.
Till October 2007, EOS had issued about 8,500 standards covering all the sectors through 117 national technical committees, 1,500 experts representing the bodies concerned with standards, over 2,000 meetings around the year, and over 30,000 circular letters for study and comments around the year.
All Egyptian standards have been harmonised with international and foreign standards, which are reviewed according to the international reference. About 21,000 foreign standards, such as JIS, DIN, IEC are electronically available for information, and the rest of foreign standards would be available as well.