India Poses Barriers to American Trade: USTR
“This is despite the fact that all U.S. electronic exports currently sold in India are fully certified in internationally recognized laboratories, and the government of India has never articulated how such a domestic certification requirement advances India’s legitimate public safety objectives,” the USTR report said.
“Notwithstanding ongoing efforts by global industry to engage the government of India to resolve concerns and ambiguities in the policy without undermining those objectives, the Order entered into force in January 2014,” it said.
“Although U.S. industry would ultimately like to see the entire policy repealed, an important first step is to seek an exemption for Highly Specialized Equipment (HSE), including servers, storage, printing machines, and IT products that are installed, operated, and maintained by professionals who are trained to manage the product’s inherent safety risks,” the report said.
USTR said the United States will continue to seek clarification on the scope and application of the revised Preferential Market Access (PMA) policy for domestically manufactured telecommunications equipment and closely monitor its implementation in 2014.
The United States, it said, has detailed concerns about ‘onerous’ India-specific labelling issues in previous TBT Reports since the FSSR were published in India’s Gazette in 2011. India’s responses have failed to provide additional or reliable information with regard to how the elements of this measure advances safety or efficacy or quality of the products in question or meets the specific needs of India, the report said.
The Legal Metrology Rules create mandatory package sizes in metric units excluding many U.S. food products from the market since they are packaged in traditional English units (fluid ounces, pounds and pints), it said. Highly impacted commodities include canned and bottled drinks, packaged biscuits and bottled vegetable oils.
Mandatory package size requirements are not recommended by international standards, it said.
Net weight declaration, supported by Codex and other international bodies, better protects consumers from fraudulent packaging practices, the report said.
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