Adoption of global standards will improve our productivity: Vice President Ansari

Mumbai [India], Dec. 27 (ANI): Vice President M. Hamid Ansari on Tuesday said that adoption of global standards will improve our productivity and enable Indian companies to access the global export market. Delivering the Dr. M. Visvesvaraya Memorial lecture on 'Enhancing Indian Productivity: Role of Global Standards', Vice President Ansari said M. Visvesaraya was an engineering genius who believed in hard work and perfection and had he been here today, his advice would be to innovate, excel and create things that were world class. The Vice President said that the major challenges presently facing our economy include an increasing trade deficit, and the need to generate employment for millions of youth joining the workforce. He further said that Indian manufacturing needs to improve in terms of productivity and efficiency to compete in a globalized market. Vice President Ansari said that global standards are becoming an increasingly important factor in our way of life, ensuring the safety and quality of products and services, facilitating international trade and improving the environment in which we live in. He further said that there are standards to protect the environment and human health and safety, accounting and to mediate in commercial transactions. There are even standards of acceptable behavior within a society, he added. The Vice President said that the global technology standard has become the source of a core competitive edge for industrial development. He further said that the global standardization process needs to become much more transparent so that interested parties can better understand the potential competitive effects of particular standards. Given that these technology standards are the essential building blocks by which a nation can develop and maintain a competitive national economy, the challenge is to develop the capacity to not only meet the requirements of international standards but to create and set standards that become global in their influence, he added. (ANI)