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Trade Secrets Export Quality Management
The Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations significantly
reduced tariff barriers to trade. However, exporters continue to face
non-tariff barriers in the form of standards, technical regulations,
sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and conformity assessment procedures.
To costly process for exporters in developing countries and transition
economies.
Many of these countries have not yet been able to take full advantage of
the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Application of
Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. This stem largely from a lack of
resources for participating fully in the work of international standards
setting bodies and thus for influencing the preparation of the standards
which serve as a basis for technical regulations and sanitary and phytosanitary
measures. Furthermore, enterprises in these countries often do not have ready
access to conformity assessment services that are acceptable in export markets,
in the absence of a full-fledged national infrastructure for standardization,
quality assurance, accreditation and metrology. Consequently, they often have
to rely on the services of foreign conformity assessment bodies to demonstrate
compliance with the requirements of their export markets.
Give this context, the International Trade Centre saw fit to produce a guide
providing SME managers in developing countries and transition economies with
answers in simply language to their most frequently asked questions on standards
and conformity assessment. This book is based on the questions most frequently
asked by the SMEs surveyed for the purpose of this book in various development
countries. The questions address issues such at technical regulations and
standards, product certification, testing, metrology, quality management,
ISO 9000, other management systems, accreditation and the Agreements on TBT
and SPS.
We hope that this book, which forms part of the ITC Trade Secrets series of
question-and-answer guides, will be useful to SMEs in their export efforts.
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