New Delhi (NVI): ‘Quality Infrastructure’ was the underlying theme of the seventh annual meeting of the Indo-German Working Group that took place in Delhi recently, with around 80 participants.
During the meeting, the Indian and German sides signed Work Plan 2020 on Quality Infrastructure for cooperation, Standardisation, conformity assessment, and product safety.
“Quality infrastructure is the language of international trade. With a growing relevance of technical regulations, our exchange on regulatory approaches and compliance procedures eases doing business and boosts trade. I welcome the signing of our Work Plan 2020,” said Director General Stefan Schnorr of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).
Under this year’s work plan, BMWi and the Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution in collaboration with other Ministries are working closely together a number of factors to strengthen the bilateral trade between two countries through quality infrastructure. These include standardisation, accreditation and conformity assessment, metrology, product safety and market surveillance.
“A mutual understanding of requirements for safe and secure products helps to protect the citizens in both countries. Our Indo-German discussion paper on the cybersecurity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices which we just launched is a good example for our successful cooperation,” Stefan Schnorr said.
Germany and India established the Working Group in 2013 to strengthen their economic and technical cooperation, reduce technical barriers to trade, and increase product safety.
Also present on the occasion, Secretary, Consumer Affairs, Avinash Srivastava said, “Germany is a trusted and important partner for India. It is encouraging to see the intense technical cooperation that happens in our bilateral Working Group. This year we will also put focus on strengthening the dialogue on technical regulation, exchange on regulations of medical devices, and exploring twinning arrangements at ISO and IEC level.”
Along with Director General Stefan Schnorr, this year’s annual meeting was also attended by representatives from the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (DKE), the National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB), and representatives from German companies and industry associations such as VDMA and VDA.
The Indian delegation included representatives from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) as well as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
