The Hindu Business Line : `No drought impact on foodgrain exports'

MR Sharad Yadav, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, has ruled out any impact of drought on the export of foodgrains from the country.

He said the Government was taking necessary steps to strengthen the procurement systems in States especially Orissa, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, while speaking to presspersons after inaugurating a seminar on `Standards and Conformity Assessment' organised by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) in connection with the World Standards Day celebrations, here today.

Speaking at the inauguration, the Minister, called upon the industry to produce quality goods to face the challenges in the international markets. The Minister pointed out that reform measures brought in by Governments have given a relatively liberal economic regime allowing free trade and enterprise in India.

However, liberalisation has also brought competition both at the domestic level as well as from overseas, he said. The Minister also expressed concern that currently India is being targeted by some countries for selling sub-standard products produced by them and urged that while safeguarding our commitments as a member of WTO national interest should be given top most importance.

"Having an effective and efficient national system for checking quality of foods and services produced and imported is the best tool to safeguard our interest both as a producing as well as a consuming nation," he said. Speaking at the occasion, Mr S. Bandopadhyay, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, said: "For developing countries like India, there was an urgent need to immediately establish measures for Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) with our major trade partners where they could agree to use assessment of each other to grant their own certificates or conformity assessment documents for ensuring quality of products."

This would ensure free flow of trade as well as reduction in certification costs, he said. MRAs play a major role under which the exporting countries certificate could be accepted as compliance to technical regulation without having to go through certification procedures, he pointed out.

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