Trade Issues in East Asia, January 2008 : Overcoming Trade Barriers from Standards and Technical Regulations
This paper is about trade issues in East Asia. One of the most important non-tariff measures is regulations and standards aimed at securing the safety and or quality of products, labeling requirements and protection of the environment. Standards ar...
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Format: | Policy Note |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
Washington, DC
2014
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/01/9041430/trade-issues-east-asia-overcoming-trade-barriers-standards-technical-regulations http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19526 |
Summary: | This paper is about trade issues in East
Asia. One of the most important non-tariff measures is
regulations and standards aimed at securing the safety and
or quality of products, labeling requirements and protection
of the environment. Standards are now recognized as a trade
issue since they determine market access. The use of
standards by governments to meet public health and safety
objectives and by the private sector to meet market-driven
consumer and industrial objectives is important for economic
development. Standards provide information on the quality
and reliability of a product that may not be readily
observable and thus reduce uncertainty and contribute to
increased trade. Standards have become a key element in
facilitating trade within and between countries since in
order for a good to be traded it must comply with the agreed
standard. This applies to both mandatory standards required
by governments and voluntary standards set by industry
associations and other non-state actors. Recognizing the
potential of diverging national technical regulations to
hinder trade flows, the Association of South-East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) has taken steps to eliminate such barriers
in the sectors it considers important for economic
integration. The sector that will be the first to have a
fully harmonized regulatory regime across ASEAN countries
will be cosmetics, starting in January 2008. The new
regulation primarily involves broadly defined common safety
requirements and a new approach to risk management, which
does away with the requirement of pre-market approval for
cosmetics products and introduces instead a system of
post-market surveillance. In doing so, the new directive
shifts to a great extent the responsibility of ensuring
safety from the government to the private sector. |
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