Regional trade: Harmonisation of standards progresses at a snail\'s pace

Complying with the standards of products in international trade is becoming increasingly difficult. Developed countries and multinational corporations are gradually setting complex set of standards. Developing countries are also forced to follow the track which is burdensome for their producers and exporters. Though there is no way to ignore the importance of standards to ensure quality and safety of products, excessive rigidity turns standards into barriers to trade. Moreover, differences among countries on standards make things more complex. Thus, trading partners in different regional trading blocs have identified 'a set a regional standards' as a tool to deal with the problem.
 In line with this approach, members of the SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) also agreed to frame a set of SAARC or South Asian regional standards.  Thus, the body named South Asian Regional Standards Organisation (SARSO) was established with its secretariat in Dhaka.
In fact, intra-regional trade in South Asia has not been progressing mainly due to Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) many of which ultimately turned into Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs). There is a strong linkage between standards and NTBs. Not that all standards are meant to create barriers to trade, but some are deliberately created by some countries to discourage trading partners. Again, some standards appear as NTBs as trading partners fail to comply with those.
NO MAGIC SOLUTION: Regional standards can help members of a regional trading group to reduce the barriers to intra-regional trade through harmonisation of their respective standards. It is a daunting task. All members of a certain regional trade bloc do not have symmetrical economic strength and their socio-economic structures also vary in many respects. Thus, advanced members have the opportunity to ride on others while setting standards of their own advantage.
At the same time, it is also true that defining the standards with absolute clarity is a difficult task. Basically, there are three types of standards: product standard, process standard and management system. Generally known as 'a documentation providing rules, guidelines or characteristics of any product or production methods', standards are very much linked with Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Measures (SPS). The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), classifies TBT and SPS as technical measures of NTMs.  The World Trade Organisation's (WTO) agreements on TBT and SPS, however, don't bind the member countries legally to adopt unique set of standards. Neither the agreements bar all or some of the member countries to do so.
Thus, developing a set of regional standards is a voluntary exercise, but it may turn legally binding under the purview of RTAs (regional trade agreements) for the trading partners. By developing regional standards, although the countries under an RTA can easily deal with TBT and other related issues, these may be discriminatory to countries outside the particular RTA. Some countries may find those difficult to comply with as those may be more stringent than country specific standards. On the other hand, countries within the trading bloc may opt for a dual set of standards-regional, for member countries of the bloc and national, for countries outside the bloc. Again, any country of the trading bloc may impose regional standards for certain products and national standards for other products. All these can make the thing more and more complex.
Nevertheless, efforts to develop and adopt regional standards are there. One example is regional standards in Mercosur, a major free trade bloc and custom union of five Latin American countries. It was formed in 1991 amongst Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Later Venezuela joined the bloc. Despite a lot of limitations, Mercosur is considered a successful integrated region in the world where all the members are developing countries. In 1994 Mercosur Standardisation Association (ANM) was formed.  Headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil's financial capital, the body has 25 technical committees and developed around 600 standards for products and services.
Again, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has a policy guideline on standards and conformance. The 10-member countries, through the ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standards and Quality (ACCSQ), are working to 'harmonise national standards with international standards and implement mutual recognition arrangements on conformity assessment.' The ultimate declared goal is: 'One Standard, One Test, Accepted Everywhere'. So far, harmonisations of standards of 20 priority products and 81 safety standards have been completed.   
Experiences of setting and adopting regional standards in both these regions can be a good learning experience for SAARC countries.   
A NEW BABY IN SAARC: Agreement on establishing the SARSO was signed in August, 2011. It became operational in April, 2014. The ultimate goal of the regional standard body is 'to achieve and enhance coordination and cooperation among SAARC member states in the fields of standardisation and conformity assessment' as well as 'to develop harmonised standards for the region to facilitate intra-regional trade and to have access in the global market.'
Thus, SARSO is a new baby of the SAARC-- the designated body for setting regional standards.  Like many initiatives fraught with difficulties within the ambit of the SAARC, SARSO is also facing difficulties in moving forward in a desirable manner. There are two more agreements to make the regional standards effective. One is: SAARC Agreement on Implementation of Regional Standards, other is: SAARC Agreement on Multilateral Arrangement on Recognition of Conformity Assessment. Among the eight member countries of the SAARC, Nepal is yet to ratify the agreements. SARSO has, however, started its work and six technical committees are now engaged in developing regional standards for different sectors. Among the six technical committees, the committee on conformity assessment is yet to do its first meeting. It is to be noted that conformity assessment is a procedure of testing whether a product, material, service or system meets the specifications of a relevant standard.
So far, 50 draft standards have been developed and are now under review of the relevant technical committees. 52 more items have been selected for development of regional standards. But the most significant progress, so far, is the finalisation of seven SAARC standards. Of these, six are specifications for refined sugar, biscuits, hessian products, cotton drill, cotton twill and jute twine. The remaining one is the code of hygienic practices for dairy sector.
SARSO's role is to provide the framework towards harmonisation of standards among the countries. The major challenge here is subsequent adoption of the standards by member countries which, among other things, will involve legal procedures of the respective countries.    
In the near future, standards are believed to become more critical due to mega-regional trade blocs like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which are set to adopt more stringent standards. So, developing countries will face critical challenges to comply with those standards. Given this, SAARC member countries need to be more forthcoming in matters of harmonisation in order that trade within the bloc can surge in a desired way with SARSO doing the ground work.             
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