Shafi Shiddique/ Alive News:
Faridabad: Facing a sharp drop in exports in an extremely challenging global market, engineering exporters today held a brain-storming session with senior Commerce Ministry officials in the industrial town of Faridabad to identify the areas to arrest the slowdown in exports.
The brain-storm was done by the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB) and the Quality Council of India (QCI) under the aegis of the EEPC India with the active support of the Commerce Ministry.
In his candid address, EEPC India Executive Director & Secretary, Mr. Bhaskar Sarkar said that in the current scenario, engineering manufacturer-exporters have to upgrade their standards to the next level not only to maintain their market shares but also to make new forays.
He said that from our analysis of India’s major export destinations for engineering exports like USA and major European countries, it is understood that stiffer technical regulations and standards for the products imported into the country is partially blocking the growth of exports. Therefore India needs an increasing preparedness to face the challenges of an overall upgraded standards and regulations globally,” Mr. Sarkar said.
In his address, a senior official from the Department of Commerce said that the industry needs to be aware of international standards and technical regulations and why they need to comply with them. Also they need to be aware of voluntary standards as for many products the buyers require compliance to them. Industry should know what caution it must exercise while using the services of accredited bodies or getting systems certification.
The products and services exported from India must meet international standards and country specific technical regulations in order to increase exports and the industry needs to be geared up for gaining more market share in international markets. Further, with focus shifting on ‘Make in India’ and various initiatives taken by the government the quality of products and services need to be par excellence.
The event in Faridabad is the pilot phase of government-industry programme which will be taken to different engineering clusters with various product ranges.
While addressing the gathering, former Chairman of EPPC India, Mr. R P Jhalani said, major products like iron and steel, electrical machinery , industrial machinery etc suffer from lack of standards harmonization. Therefore, creation of more labs and certification bodies and harmonization of Indian standards with international ones is the need of the hour. He said it was a matter of concern that the cumulative value of engineering exports during April-December 2015-16 recorded a dip by over 14.9 percent to US$ 45.32 billion from US$ 53.26 billion the same period last year.
