New Delhi. In March-April this year, some European countries including Singapore raised questions on the quality of Indian spices and the result was that in the first quarter of the current financial year (April-June) the spice export fell by 1.48 percent in comparison to April-June last year, whereas for the last three years the export of spices has been increasing continuously. Before spices, apart from food items like rice, mango, items like baby clothing, perfume spray, salt lamp have been rejected in Europe and other countries due to lack of quality.

But the bigger issue is that many goods are being rejected by the consumers within the country. From clothing to footwear, there are many such goods which are not able to reach the international standards. While the footwear industry is openly opposing it. In such a situation, how will it be able to make its presence felt in the world market is a big question. Now the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is going to launch a portal to save Indian goods from being rejected due to lack of quality, where there will be information about the quality standards of all countries. From the portal, exporters will be able to know what quality they should have for export.

This is the reason why the Commerce Department is preparing detailed guidelines on what to take care of while preparing or sending food items abroad. Meetings of the Commerce Department are being held with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). Arrangements are also being made so that foreign buyers will be able to see even the cultivation of fruits in India. However, questions are also being raised that why only abroad, why the quality of other food items including spices is not being guaranteed at the domestic level. It is a good thing that the new portal will help in promoting our trade abroad.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has issued an order to implement quality control rules on the advice of the Department of Industrial Promotion and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Quality rules have been implemented or are about to be implemented on many items like toys, slippers and other footwear, coolers, electric water heaters, water meters, plastic bottles, etc. But how effective it is at the domestic level is yet to be tested. In fact, footwear companies believe that implementing quality rules increases its price and the reason for this is that the entire cluster related to footwear manufacturing is not ready here.

The same thing is being said by many other industries as well. There are no standards at the domestic level for food items. An interesting aspect of this was seen when the then Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan raised questions on the quality of apples that came to his home, but whether any solution was found or not is not public. It is said that under the quality rules implemented by the government to reduce imports and promote domestic manufacturing, foreign companies will have to take a BIS officer to their country and inspect the factory to get a BIS certificate in order to send their goods to India.

BIS has identified more than 1000 small items like lighters, baby diapers, baby mouth suckers etc. which are imported on a large scale for enforcing quality norms. If domestic manufacturing has to produce goods that can last in the global market with quality standards, then a complete manufacturing ecosystem will have to be created.