Facilitating QCO Implementation for Global Trade

How India's Quality Control Orders, backed by Mutual Recognition Agreements, can shift the narrative from regulation to opportunity, driving trust, uniformity, and competitiveness in manufacturing

- By Rajiv Arora

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, including India, generally perceive Quality Control Orders (QCOs), established to ensure adherence to stipulated quality standards, as barriers erected for increased compliance and regulation. Stakeholders involved get anxious about adapting to a new culture. However, the strategic benefits of such QCOs in unleashing global opportunities often go unnoticed.

QCOs offer a structured path to ensure that the foundation of our manufacturing sector is built on safety and quality from the beginning, helping to prevent reliance on inferior goods that can undermine long-term industrial growth. A quality culture in the country today is nonnegotiable to ensure that India is perceived as a trusted manufacturing economy.

India realises the importance of ensuring a quality ecosystem, which is visible in the strides made in global trade facilitation through the signing of Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) with nine countries. India plans to expand this network to ten more nations by December this year. MRAs are agreements between countries that allow each party to accept the other's product testing and certification. These enable bilateral trade facilitation, making it easier for goods to move without facing redundant testing and certification procedures, thereby enhancing mutual market access.

The QCO-MRA Link

It’s natural to ask whether MRAs, with their limited partnering scope, can facilitate the adoption of technical standards on a multilateral or Most Favoured Nation (MFN) basis. The MRAs emulate the success witnessed in deepening globalisation through the Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) model, established to enhance market access through tariff preferences among partner countries.