"Quality Control Orders' Impact on India's Manufacturing Growth"
Quality Control Order (QCO)
mandatory technical regulation requiring BIS certification for a notified product before sale.
BIS Act, 2016
law empowering government to make product certification compulsory in India.
Quality regulation of manufactured goods in India traces to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act, 2016, which gave the government wide power to make BIS certification compulsory for specified products through Quality Control Orders (QCOs). A QCO requires a notified product to conform to an Indian Standard and carry BIS certification before it can be manufactured, sold or imported. After 2019, the number of products under QCOs rose sharply, from 88 to 765 by the end of 2024, largely to reduce import dependence and improve product quality. This rapid expansion drew objections from India's trading partners. The WTO's eighth Trade Policy Review of India, held in mid-2026, saw the European Union and the United States, along with BRICS partners such as Brazil, China and Indonesia, flag QCOs as potential non-tariff barriers.
Under WTO rules, this kind of regulation falls under the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), which allows countries to set technical regulations for legitimate reasons such as safety and quality, provided they are not more trade-restrictive than necessary and are based on international standards where these exist. This is different from the WTO's Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS) Agreement, which instead bars investment-linked conditions on trade in goods, such as import restrictions tied to a foreign investor's local operations, without itself regulating foreign investment as such. QCOs on chemicals, steel or electronics are TBT-type quality measures, not TRIMS-type investment measures, though both sit within the wider WTO non-tariff-barrier framework. This distinction shapes which WTO disciplines actually apply when a QCO is challenged by a trading partner.
A QCO is issued by a line ministry once BIS notifies a relevant Indian Standard, requiring manufacturers, domestic or foreign, to obtain BIS certification before the product can be legally sold in India. Certification usually proceeds through BIS's Scheme-I route, involving factory audits, but many smaller or newer firms struggle to secure this promptly. To ease this bottleneck, the government recently notified the Transition Facilitation (Quality Control) Order, 2026, through the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). …
With reference to 'Trade-Related Investment Measures' (TRIMS), which of the following statements is/are correct?
1.Quantitative restrictions on imports by foreign investors are prohibited.
2.They apply to investment measures related to trade in both goods and services.
3.They are not concerned with the regulation of foreign investment.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
'Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA)' is sometimes seen in the news in the context of negotiations held between India and
Which WTO agreement permits member countries to set technical regulations for legitimate objectives such as health, safety and product quality, provided such regulations are not more trade-restrictive than necessary?
Match List-I (WTO Agreement) with List-II (Primary Focus) and select the correct answer using the code given below:
List-I
A.TRIMS
B.TBT
C.SPS
D.TRIPS
List-II
1.Sanitary and phytosanitary measures
2.Intellectual property rights
3.Investment measures affecting trade in goods
4.Technical regulations and standards for products
Consider the following statements regarding Quality Control Orders (QCOs) in India:
1.They are issued under powers granted by the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016.
2.They mandate compliance with a relevant Indian Standard for the notified product.
3.They are administered exclusively by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT).
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
The Transition Facilitation (Quality Control) Order, 2026 allows eligible firms unable to obtain BIS Scheme-I certification to do which of the following, in specified sectors such as toys, footwear and air conditioners?
With reference to a recent study on the impact of input Quality Control Orders (QCOs) on chemical-using firms in India, consider the following statements:
1.Larger firms experienced an increase in production alongside a decline in gross value added.
2.Smaller firms experienced a significant decline in production.
3.Smaller firms experienced a decline in profitability without a significant change in production.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
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