PRODUCT STANDARDIZATION EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

Some data mentions that currently nearly 70% of imports of non-food products found to be incompatible with Indonesian National Standard (SNI), also in labeling and manual warranty card. In a condition where producers’ awareness of product standardization is quite low, consumers should be smart in buying a product. For example, by looking at the expiry date, SNI, and manual warranty card and so on. Entrepreneurs or food producers who supply goods to the cheap market should not give food items which are almost expired.

In order to provide an understanding of the importance of standardization to producers and consumers, the National Standardization Agency (BSN) will host a series of events to commemorate the Quality Month which is held annually in November. Head of BSN, Bambang Prasetya, in Jakarta (Wednesday, October 16), said that many countries in the world are campaigning for the importance of standards for life, coinciding with the World Standard Day which falls on October 14.

The Quality Months commemoration momentum is very important for all Indonesian people to recall the importance of standardization. The importance of a standard and quality of a product needs to be voiced constantly and should be able to reverberate up to all layers of the society and the villages since the flow of goods and services is getting out of control. The rise of imported products often causes various reactions and problems in the country. “We cannot allow unqualified products to enter our market. Standards are very important, and we must prevent it”, said Bambang.

Bambang said that SNI will continue to be added to protect the domestic market from the invasion of low-quality imported products. This year, he said, BSN will publish 325 additional SNI rules. The SNI publication is primarily to make Indonesian products stronger in facing competition with imported products. Because a lot of imported products cost less and not of good quality. So, local products that are more expensive can be displaced despite having a better quality.

Bambang said that some sectors which are the focus this year is for example, SNI for fishery and tourism products. In addition, he will also be working on SNI for energy management. Other sectors are SNI for transportation also includes SNI for manufacture of converter kit. The preparation of SNI for converter kit, according to him, will take a one-year time, provided that it adjusts with the other existing standards such as ISO.

He said that BSN will also undertake development program of standardization and conformity assessment system in order to produce documents about Law on Standardization and Conformity Assessment in 2013. Bambang said the currently, BSN is identifying imported products that entered the domestic market. This is to map the SNI to be designed on these products. A similar move has been made to secure Indonesian products in the free trade.

According to him, BSN is identifying 178 products from South Korea and 341 products from India. The same was done on products from Australia and New Zealand. He reminded that the implementation of AEC 2015 should be properly addressed. Because these moments will make ASEAN a trade zone without restrictions. ASEAN will be integrated, so all economic rules will be the same. 

Business News - October 18, 2013