High cost of standard compliance making exports to EU diff

By Staff
|
Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, Mar 19 (UNI) Indian exporters to the EU are finding it increasingly difficult to comply with European Union's (EU) product and process standards, according to a survey carried out by FICCI.

The survey reveals that in some cases the cost of complying with the EU standards could be as high as 65 per cent of the production cost of the good.

Exporters of a wide variety of products like grapes, chillies, machinery, textiles, garments, switch-gears, refrigerators, mango, papaya, pineapple and chemicals say that high cost of certificates for complying with EU standards and lack of availability of certifying agencies in the country to issue such certificates is making it difficult for them to export to the EU.

In its recommendations to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, FICCI has requested the Government to take it up with EU authorities in the India-EU High Level Trade Group set up recently.

According to the survey, exports for agricultural items, especially fruits, Indian exporter needs to have a number of certificates like EurepGap Certificate, British Retailers Consortium (BRC) Certificate, Fumigation Certificate, Codex, HACCP Certification, Kosher Certification, ISO 9001 Certification, and Natur's Choice Certification.

Enumerating the cost involved, FICCI said the cost of EurepGap Certificate comes to Rs 1 lakh per farmer, the cost of BRC Certificate is Euro 4,500 and the cost of Kosher Certificate is Euro 3,500.

Besides this, testing analysis cost for Maximum Residue Level (MRL) for pesticides is close to Euro 200 per parameter. As it is evident, all these costs are high not only for small exporters but even for the large size exporters.

In addition to the high cost of complying with standards, Indian exporters of agricultural products are finding it difficult to export to the EU because of EU's categorisation of India as GBR-I country, delay in approval by EU agencies for Indian processing units of egg and milk products and frequent changes in MRL levels by EU.

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