G/TBT/GEN/246  
 
17 May 2018  
(18-2935) Page: 1/2 
 Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade  Original: English  
 
ACTIVITIES OF THE UNITED NATIONS I NDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMEN T ORGANIZATION 
(UNIDO) RELATED TO THE WORK OF THE WTO TBT COMMI TTEE  
STATEMENT BY UNIDO  
This document contains information provided by UNIDO at the TBT Committee meeting of 
21-22 March 2018 under Agenda Item 5 (Observers).  
 
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1.  I would like to take this opportunity to update the Committee  about the latest development of 
a Quality Policy Guiding Principles document which were developed and finalized  recently togeth er 
with the International Network on Quality Infrastructure  comprising ten international organizations 
and bodies, with valuable contribution from WTO, the World Bank and OECD experts.  
2.  Learning from its TBT -related trade capacity building activities, UNID O has realized that quality 
and standards related challenges in developing countries could only be tackled by a robust, 
adaptive, cost -effective, user -friendly and sustainable quality infrastructure system  that could 
provide  public and private sectors with  access to appropriate standardization, metrology, 
accreditation, conformity assessment, and market surveillance.  
3.  During past four decades, UNIDO has been a main global provider of quality infrastructure 
development . UNIDO has been working  with various dev elopment partners such as EU, Norad  
(Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation ), SECO  (State Secretariat for 
Economic Affairs  of Switzerland)  and Sida  (Swedish International Development 
Cooperation Agency ) to support developing countries in  development  of modern QI system s, to  
serve  effectively and efficiently their national needs of industrial development, economic 
transformation, and  to promote their integration into international trade and global value chains.  
4.  Realizing that QI components may evol ve in isolation and overlap in functions and 
responsibilities, resulting in policy gaps and lack synergies, proper interventions at policy level  
are usually critical to address these challenge s and to ensure good governance . So far, UNIDO has 
assisted or s upported  26 countries and three regional groups to devise viable policy instruments, 
namely Quality Policy . QP specifies the objectives of a national or regional QI system such as 
industrial development, competitiveness in global markets, trade facilitatio n, food safety, public 
health, environment  protection , climate change and etc. QP also sets up the framework for joint 
efforts of national and regional quality infrastructure institutions with clearly assigned roles and 
responsibilities to each stakeholder .  
5.  Together with INQI partners, UNIDO developed trilogy on quality policy formulation, namely 
Quality Policy Guiding Principles, Quality Policy Practical Tool and Quality Policy Technical Guide . 
These principles , tool and guide aim to assist national or re gional governments or organizations 
interested in developing modern QI system s or reforming their own systems to initiate and 
develop a holistic and need -driven QP, to ensure sound interaction  between QI components and 
good governance of its QI system s, addressing their needs, priorities and development challenges.  G/TBT/GEN/246  
 
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  6.  Recognizing that these principles could better support TBT -related technical assistance 
activities  and enrich efforts  by international societies to advance sustainable development goals,  
UNIDO is to organize a n event on good governance for QI development  during the next TBT 
Committee meeting, to present and launch the quality policy guiding principles document. UNIDO 
would like to invite all WTO Members to join us to the event . We will share f urther information 
later through WTO Secretariat to the TBT Committee.  
 
 
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