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Surmounting Technical Barriers to Trade (09/01)
09/01/2012 - 19 Lượt xem
Vietnam has implemented the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBT) since mid 2005. TBT is one of the 14 trade in goods agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). TBT describes obligations and principles that its
members must fulfill and follow when constructing and implementing
technical barriers to trade. Vietnam pledged to fulfill obligations required by TBT when negotiating its WTO accession.
A seminar summarizing the project for TBT implementation from 2005-2011 took place on December 23, 2011 in Hanoi. Vu Van Dien, the deputy general director of the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality (STAMEQ), said that over the past five years more than 5,338 national standards, 170 testing and measuring processes and about 3,000 branch standards have been reviewed to satisfy demands for state management of standards and quality and production and trading development. The rate of national standards that are compliant with international
and regional standards and those in foreign countries has increased
from 25 percent in 2005 to almost 40 percent, making Vietnam become an
above-the-average country in the world in this regard. The biggest weakness related to the project's implementation lies in cooperation
in coping with technical barriers and substandard goods (both domestic
and imported) control between branches and between businesses and state authorities.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh said that trade deficit control has never been a target of technical barriers and that technical barriers are aimed at protecting human, fauna and flora health and the ecological environment and controlling trade evasion.
Businesses complained that barriers in foreign markets are too strict and therefore obstruct their exports. Is that right? The Deputy Minister said that any assessments should be fair. While Vietnamese mothers don't buy Japanese Meiji powdered milk affected by radioactivity and Chinese milk products containing melamine because they believe that those products are not good for their children, European consumers have the right to protect their children and families from seafood imports with salmonella and other ingredients that cause carcinogens when exceeding permissible levels, he said.
Any
complaints by businesses need to be considered properly. In this
regard, consumer interest should be a priority and businesses need to
respect a barrier if it is an appropriate one. A complaint could be appropriate
in cases where barriers for domestic goods are low but those applied to
imports are strict. Businesses should not complain about barriers that are applied to both domestic and imported commodities.
There are imports that should be controlled, such as outdated and old equipment because this equipment could churn out unsafe products. There are imports like some kinds of farm produce that could not be controlled because standards subject to both domestically made and imported products must be the same.
While
technical barriers for controlling substandard imports exist unknown
and unsafe goods are still imported into Vietnam through different
channels including smuggling. This is not the barriers' fault but related management authorities' fault. Vietnam could construct barriers as strict as those in Japan and the EU but that could be a problem for domestic businesses that are
uncapable of surmounting those strict barriers and those barriers could
be not yet suitable with Vietnamese conditions. Strict barrier application requires big infrastructure and machinery investment, the Deputy Minister said.
Hence, in the coming time the TBT implementation project need to continue improving the community's awareness of TBT, further improve related
legal frameworks, keep an eye on foreign technicals barriers to see if
those barriers are proper or not so early warnings can be made for
Vietnamese businesses. It is necessary to control product quality right
in production bases, while cooperation with relevant authorities to assist businesses satisfy high standards in foreign markets is important./.
Source: VEN
Source: VEN
