The National Competitiveness Council’s National Quality Infrastructure Working Group (NCC-NQI WG) in cooperation with the Board of Investments (BOI) organized a workshop on National Quality Infrastructure and Regulatory Workshop on 17 August 2017.

The objective of the said workshop is to highlight the quality infrastructure services (Standards, Accreditation, and Metrology) and their uses in trade facilitation, investment and development.  It also aims to identify regulatory gaps that hinder ease of doing business and industry development.

One of the core functions of the NQI is to provide reliable and credible technical services to all stakeholders and users in support to any policy that requires a technical solution. According to Mr. Ernani Dionisio, Assistant Director Philippine Accreditation Bureau, reliability and credibility requires high degree of specialization, coordination at strategic level and independence at technical level, impartiality, national and international recognition and effective and efficient institutions.

Case studies on issues and concerns of the industry that requires NQI intervention were presented by representatives from the steel, chemical, semiconductor and coconut sector.  Dr. Kenneth Hartigan-Go, former FDA Director General who facilitated the workshop said that the output from the workshop will be an input to the workshop for regulators in November.

The said workshop is first of a series of workshops to be conducted by NCC to determine NQI requirements and regulatory burden of the priority industries. Priority industries for this workshop include electrical appliances, construction materials, chemicals, coconut-based products, organic products and ship building.