The Indian government is considering beefing up the technical regulation regime in an attempt to curb non-essential imports into the country. BIS, the nodal standards regulator has been tasked by the Commerce ministry to notify at least 5000 technical standards as against the 370 or so that is present currently. The idea is to allow imports of only those products that conform to technical regulation norms that are being drawn up by BIS. Many countries used standards as a non-tariff measure to regulate imports.

India has been identified as one of the key markets by the CEN and CENELEC. To address the India market related issues and to create synergies with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and other important Indian standardization bodies, India Task Force was constituted. As a first step towards creating close working relationship with the Bureau of Indian Standards and to understand the commonalities and gaps on standardization strategy and standards development process between India and Europe.  A two-day joint workshop was organized by BIS, CEN CENELEC on 26^th and 27^th November 2019 at New Delhi, India. Presentations made during workshop are available here

To boost exports, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has been directed to set standards for export items, which get rejected for non-compliance of global quality norms. The Minister said that the countries like Europe have new standards & parameters and our exporters are not able to comply with them. He has directed BIS to ensure all standards are in line with global standards.  At present, only 50 % of standards are at par with international norms.