OPENING ADDRESS
BY
H.E. Mr. CHAM PRASIDH,
MINISTER OF COMMERCE,
AT THE ACCSQ SEMINAR
ON STANDARDS AND CONFORMITY ASSESSMENT
NOVEMBER 20-22, 2001 – PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests speakers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the Royal Government of Cambodia and on my own behalf as Minister of Commerce and Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Coordinating Committee on Quality Control of Goods and Services, I wish to express my great appreciation for the kind and cooperative effort made by the ASEAN Secretariat and all ACCSQ leaders and our partners in the CER countries so that this very important seminar comes into reality.
I warmly welcome all guest speakers and wish them all a good stay in Cambodia.
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Everyone must know that the main trend in the world is trade liberalization, free circulation of goods in the country, trade expansion, integration and free trade in the region and the world in order to improve the living standards of the people and pull them out off the shackles of poverty.
In the international standards community such as the ISO, people speak about a dream, which is: for the products and services offered in the global market to arrive at an ultimate goal when “one standards, one test and one conformity assessment procedure” will be recognized and “accepted everywhere”.
Among politicians and government regulators, issues are being discussed in the WTO/TBT where it seems that everyone can agree that international standards should be the basis of international trade and conformity assessment.
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The ASEAN countries are in process of developing detailed works to realize the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) with the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) as one of the mechanism for its realization.
In line with the above general trend, Cambodia became a full number of the ASEAN and AFTA in 1999 and is being prepared to begin implementing the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme.
Cambodia is convinced that its long-term interest will be better served if it actively supports the standards and conformity assessment issues at the national, regional or even international levels and receives inputs from them. It is clear that conformity assessment plays a key role. The largest numbers of technical barriers to trade identified by WTO are connected in one way or another to different conformity assessment requirements in different countries. These different requirements are very often due to the use of different standards or regulations to which conformity assessment must be demonstrated.
Cambodia exports currently face many trade obstacles in entering into markets in particular technical barriers related to standards and conformity assessment. Cambodia’s domestic capacity or infrastructure is still weak to be able to meet standards and testing requirements to adopt international standards and to take advantage of new market access.
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are very well aware that there is a big gap between Cambodia and the other advanced ASEAN members in most of the domain of ASEAN activities including standards and conformity assessment. It is an urgent need to narrow gradually this gap.
We are proud to note that this seminar will serve this common objective. Your contribution through comments, suggestions or sharing of your precious experiences would be most appreciated.
Dear national participants,
I would like to send a strong message to all of you to try to effectively learn from this seminar. I hope that all of you from the Government sector, from the academia and from the private sector as well will gain a clearer picture of Standards and Conformity Assessment system in the advanced ASEAN countries. Together we may be able to “fill in the blanks” in our knowledge and enhance our capacity to work correctly and with greater efficiency in this field. The task ahead of us in the domain of Standards and Conformity Assessment is a very important one in facilitating intra-regional or global trade. This is the occasion to get the insight of how to get it done.
Lastly, let me conclude by wishing all guest speakers and participants a fruitful deliberation and by declaring the ACCSQ Seminar on Standards and Conformity Assessment open.
Thank you !