KARACHI, April 24: As many as 2,500-3,000 companies, mainly export oriented, have acquired the ISO-9000 quality certificates, and the government has provided around Rs50 million as a subsidy to the companies in acquiring the certificates.

The government is expected to disburse another Rs30-40 million in three to four months to 700-800 companies in getting the ISO-9000 certificates, Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC) director general Engr Abdul Rashid told newsmen at a seminar on “awareness on ISO-9001:2000 version”, organized by the Karachi Chamber of Commerce of Industry here on Thursday.

To find out that the ISO certificates proved beneficial for the export houses and companies, he said the PNAC had conducted a survey of 100 companies, including textile, leather, surgical and engineering goods. According to the survey, the export performance of 100 companies that got the ISO-9000 certificates has improved by 10-40 per cent.

He was of the view that a tough time ahead for Pakistani companies and exporters after one-and-a-half years when world markets would become more competitive owing to phasing out of quotas and import duties. Under WTO, two agreements — technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures (SPS) — need for harmonizing the national quality and infrastructure to reduce technical barriers and trade. These agreements allow the member states to take non-discriminatory steps for meeting the requirements of environment, health and safety.

He said Pakistani foods items, particularly wheat, mango, honey and onion had been refused even in underdeveloped countries like Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka and the Philippines because they did not meet the required specifications and standards. Grey cotton cloth and yarn had not attracted good prices worldwide because of lack of quality right from plucking, ginning to the spinning stage.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has so far developed more than 13,000 standards for products, processes, materials, etc. Only 140 countries are member of the ISO.

An internationally recognized system of accreditation is also established to validate the conformity with standards. The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) are the two apex bodies in their respective fields and all the reputed accreditation bodies of the world are members of the IAF and the ILAC.

He said the PNAC would soon join the IAF and the ILAC to enhance its international credibility and acceptability. These global agencies, through surveillance, assess and evaluate the performance of national accreditation system, which in turn evaluate and assess the conformity assessment bodies and laboratories on regular basis.

Abdul Rashid said that unfortunately no labs in Pakistan were accredited in view of product certification which was necessary. He said 10 labs, including the PCSIR, labs of ordnance factories, Platinum Lab, etc., had applied for accreditation and were in final stage of approval from the PNAC.

On local front, he said that consumers should now come forward and identify sub-standard products so that the government’s effort could bear fruits. He said the Ministry of Science and Technology and the PNAC had launched a crash awareness raising and training programme in the field of quality, and under this programme 500 seminars in collaboration with business community would be held. So far 80 seminars have been conducted under this programme in this connection.

Earlier, KCCI president Mian Nasser Hyatt Magoo said that an important feature of the ISO-9000 standards was that they were not static for all the times to come. Every ISO standard is reviewed periodically and revised in order to make it compatible with the on-going trends and technology advancement.

The 1994 version of ISO-9000/2/3 was reviewed and replaced by new standards of ISO-9001:2000 version. Thus all the companies which had already obtained the certification were given the transition period of three years to convert their quality management system to ISO-9001:2000. This transition period will end in December 2003, and after this all the surveillance and certification audit will be conducted as per ISO-9001:2000 clauses, the KCCI chief said.