New Delhi: The Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution, the national standards body of Bangladesh, has been granted accreditation for its product certification scheme by the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB), a constituent of Quality Council of India, and part of an international system of accreditation of certification and inspection bodies as per applicable international standards.
This was the first application received by NABCB from a certification body in the SAARC region where it is providing services to help develop capacity in the SAARC countries for world class conformity assessment services. BSTI, which applied to NABCB in October, 2010 underwent a rigorous process of assessment as per the applicable international standard, ISO Guide 65, comprising off site review of its documented system, assessment at its office in Dhaka and witnessing of actual inspections of manufacturing units by its inspectors by the NABCB assessors. The accreditation covers a number of food products and adherence to good hygienic/manufacturing practices and hazard analysis and critical control point methodology (GMP/GHP/HACCP) based on international standards of the Codex Alimentarius Commission by the manufacturing units.
With this accreditation, BSTI will be able to claim recognition of its certification by Bangladesh’s trading partners which in turn would help bring down costs for its exporters and increase their competitiveness in the international market. On the other hand, the importing countries, including India, would have greater assurance of the quality of food products imported from Bangladesh with BSTI certification.
NABCB has accredited nearly 50 certification and inspection bodies in India for various certification and inspection programmes under its different schemes. Accreditation has become vital in International trade for cross border acceptance of testing, inspection and certification as also for using third party conformity assessment bodies by regulators and following the worldwide trend, Indian regulators like the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board, Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India are already relying on NABCB accreditation to notify independent third party bodies for checking compliance to their regulations.
[BWI]
