Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) on Wednesday extended the due date for quality compliance by four months for goods manufactured by domestic businesses in India. DPIIT has now extended the date for implementation of Toys (Quality Control) Order, 2020 from September 1, 2020, to January 1, 2021 “to make necessary arrangements for compliance of standards in view of difficulties arising out of COVID-19 pandemic,” the department said in a statement by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
“This four-month extension should be enough to get us BIS compliant in letter and spirit. It is quite a reasonable time to get the factories BIS audited. So, while we welcome the extension, our demand remains that micro and cottage units should be exempted during the first phase of the implementation of the scheme. We need to create awareness, do capacity building for them and guide them on how to follow the process,” Ajay Aggarwal, President, The Toy Association of India told Financial Express Online. The association has 800 micro and small members out of which only around 80 have applied for the BIS certification so far.
DPIIT in its order dated February 25, 2020, had mandated toys to conform to the Indian standards and bear the Standard mark under a license from the Bureau of Indian Standards from September 1 onwards. BIS is the government’s nodal agency for standardisation, marking and quality certification of goods. Also, the government on August 21 had asked toy manufacturers and importers to pass through necessary quality norms from September 1 onwards. The extension came following the MSME-dominated toy industry’s demand seeking more time to comply with the quality norms amid the Covid pandemic.
Source: Financial Express
