From the Director's Desk:

The expansion of global trade through an increasingly free international market gives consumers the world over better access to the products and services they need and want at competitive prices. The trade regimes initiated by the WTO have already changed the business environment. There is an upsurge of activities in industry and in government to conform to international norms for facilitating trade.

The WTO agreement on Standard and Technical Barriers to Trade is intended to ensure that countries do not use national standards as hidden barriers against food imports and also encourages them to use international standard where they exist. This agreement aims to ensure transparency on issues of quality, sampling and packing. Increasingly the pattern of standards development is going to have an international focus. Apart from making goods more internationally marketable this approach to standards development aligns itself to the open market approach to economic regulation.

In the early stages of development industry relies on an intuitive sense of what are the appropriate rules to follow and what constitutes "best practices". In order to ensure conformity to minimum levels of service and/or professional ethics "codes of practices" are developed.

In the mature stages of growth National Standards are needed. Standards provide endorsement of processes and actions that leads to credibility, recognition and transparency.

If global trade is expected to help in poverty alleviation by promoting economic expansion and growth, the role of standards would grow even larger: global trade cannot be truly global until issues surrounding standards and conformity assessment practices are resolved. "A successful trade agreement cannot be developed until the necessary standards are successfully addressed right from the start - as a proactive measure not a reactive one.

Anyone who wishes to have a standard or code of practice developed should contact the Director, ABBS at 462-2424.

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