50th Meeting of ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standards and Quality (ACCSQ) and related meetings

Post by: admin - Post date: Friday, Dec 14, 2018 | 15:28 - View count: 3231

From 10 to 14 December 2018, the 50^th Meeting of the ASEAN Consultative Committee for Standards and Quality (ACCSQ) and related meetings were held in Vientiane, Laos.

Running the ACCQS Meeting were Mr. Choon Siong Sim, Chairman of the ACCQS, Singapore Standardization Organization (ESG Singapore) and Mr. Chaiyavat Tangkrock-olan, Vice Chairman of the ACCQS, representative of the Standardization Organization of Thailand, along with the attendance of representatives from Standardization Organizations of the 09 ASEAN countries.

The Vietnamese delegation consisted of representatives of the units under the STAMEQ and the Ministry of Transport.

At the opening of the meeting, Mr. Viengthong Vongthavilay, Director General of the Department of Standardization and Metrology under the Ministry of Sciences and Technology, Laos has affirmed that the 50^th meeting marked an important moment for ACCSQ.

Over the past 50 rotating meetings in ASEAN countries, ACCSQ has achieved remarkable achievements, contributed to the process of building the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and is moving towards ASEAN integration by strategic plan in the field of ​​standards and conformity assessment in the term of 2016-2025. ASEAN member countries have reviewed the performance of the key tasks of ACCSQ in 2018 and have set out ACCSQ’s plans for 2019. The key task in 2019 would be to discuss the signing of ASEAN MRAs on Building Materials, MRAs on Automotive Products, and ASEAN Agreement on Traditional Medicine and ASEAN Agreement on Functional Foods for ASEAN to be signed in 2020.

In addition, a number of new issues have been discussed, including the establishment of two new working groups under the ACCSQ such as: the ASEAN Building Working Group, the Digital Trade Working Group and the Electronic Commerce Working Group. At the meeting, the ASEAN Chemical Industries Council (ACIC) has also met with members of ACCSQ to work more closely in standardization and conformity assessment for chemicals matter. Over the past few years, the ASEAN Committee on Consumer Protection (ACCP) and the ASEAN Coordinating Council for Small and Medium Enterprises have also interacted with the ACCSQ. It has proved that these organizations have gradually appreciated the ACCSQ’s professional advisory role on standards and conformity assessment in the region.

The Vietnamese delegation attending the conference

Viet Nam (including the STAMEQ) has contributed to the development of Draft ASEAN guidelines on standards and conformity assessment such as the ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement Framework, Principles of ASEAN on Harmonization of Regulatory Framework, ASEAN Good Regulatory Practice (GRP) Guide and recognized by ASEAN countries. The meeting has agreed in principle of these documents and has reported to the ASEAN Senior Economic Officials Meeting (SEOM).

Viet Nam is currently the co-chair in the framework of ACCSQ – US cooperation in the field of standards and conformity assessment. Vietnam has promoted enhanced US-ASEAN cooperation on conformity assessment and actively proposed to the United States to organize a workshop on risk assessment of products for ASEAN management organizations to share experiences with the USA on this activity.