CCC and SIS to jointly promote trade through standardisation
Wednesday, 14 August 2013 00:00
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The South Asia and South-East Asia regions (SESA) program is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) is responsible for the overall management.
The program supports eight countries in the South Asia and South–East Asia region including Sri Lanka and the overall objective is to strengthen the institutional capacity in the countries and their National Standard Bodies (NSBs) for increased active participation in national and international standard development, and strengthening the involvement of private sector companies in standardisation.
Over the last years, the flows of investments and trade have increased widely in the world. The development is greatly influenced by multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. But increasingly with the competition, the buyer is demanding the seller to follow a universally accepted guideline, to assure a satisfactory quality management, an environmental friendly guideline, etc.
Therefore, an active and sustainable participation from the private and public sectors is vital as they have the necessary technical capacity and expertise that is needed to develop international standards which in return contribute to the economic development in the region. Small-time local producers to multinational organisations will benefit from the increased access to global export-oriented markets.
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC), the premier business chamber in Sri Lanka, has been identified as having a special and important role; both linking the program and its activities to the overall trade and business perspective but also through the extensive network on the national level, linking the program with various stakeholders (NSB, private sector companies, NGOs, universities and governmental bodies etc) that are or will be users of the ISO standards in the future.CCC will work closely with Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI) in implementing the approved national work plan under the SESA program. Further, through the Program Coordinator based at the Chamber, it further expects to support the long term sustainability of the results and also to support an institutionalisation of implemented activities in a transparent manner, in the South Asian region.
A workshop and a training of SESA program organised by SIS in collaboration with SLSI and CCC took place in July at the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, Colombo. Over 40 officials and experts of NSBs and private organisations/NGOs representing all eight countries in the region participated in the workshop.
The workshop primarily focussed on the Standard setting component; using the new ISO standard on Sustainability criteria for Bioenergy (ISO 13065) currently under development, as a case study. Further, preparation of relevant stakeholders to the upcoming ISO meeting in September was another objective of this event.
