Ensure India's global recognition as a quality conscious nation: Piyush Goyal
By TIOL News Service
NEW DELHI, MAR 04, 2021: MINISTER of Commerce and Industry Mr Piyush Goyal on Wednesday stressed on improving Indian Standards of quality as he addressed a virtual workshop organised by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).
"We must work towards ensuring India's recognition on the global stage as a quality conscious country, as a country with which people can do business with a confidence that they will get what they we say, they will receive what they require," said the minister.
As he spoke at the concluding session of the workshop on ‘Easing Compliance of BIS Certifications,' the minister emphasised that quality is profit, and it prepares businesses for greater profits.
"Quality speaks for itself, and quality is not expensive. It adds to the productivity, helps businesses to get bigger markets so that they can get economies of scale and helps to eliminate wastage," he noted.
Urging for a greater collaborative effort through industry associations, Mr Goyal said that Indian Standards should gain world-wide acceptance, symbolising quality, productivity, affordability and accessibility.
He suggested that BIS should operate on the ‘QUICK' model - Quality, Uniformity through ‘One nation One standard', International mindset, Conformity assessment and Knowledge sharing.
"Our Mantra for the day should be Quick action, Quick response, and Quick absorption of best practices and Quicker ways of working," the minister added.
"This is a dawn of a new era of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat where digitalization and efficiency are going to determine India's success in the future," he explained, calling for more use of artificial intelligence, big data and other technology related solutions to help resolve standardisation issues.
He said that the certification process will be simplified, stating that BIS should ensure the cost of testing never becomes a detriment to conforming to quality and getting certification.
He also announced a reduction of fee for the certification for MSME, women entrepreneurs and startups.
The workshop was organized jointly by Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, along with the Department of Consumer Affairs and BIS to facilitate closer interaction between various sectors of industry and the apex national standards body. Four technical sessions on standardization, testing activities, certification activity and implementation of QCO's were organized during the workshop.