In 2002, about 170,000 GOSTs were replaced by a few thousand technical regulations.
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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Russia Returning to Soviet Standards
The technical regulation reform that the Ministry of Industry and Energy has been engaged in since 2002 has come to its conclusion – a return to the Soviet model of national state standards (Russian abbreviation GOST). Grigory Elkin, head of the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation (Rostekhregulirovanie), announced yesterday that a draft law “On Standardization” would be prepared on the procedure to develop and approve national standards. In addition, amendments will be made to the Tax Code to include the cost of standardization in production costs to and the law “On State Purchasing” to make sure the government buys only standardized and certified goods. Elkin said the work was still at the conceptual stage, but the amendments would be ready by the second quarter of the year and the law by the end of the year.
In 2002, about 170,000 GOSTs were replaced by a few thousand technical regulations that exclusively concerned the product and production safety. The law “On Technical Regulation,” passed at that time, did not cancel the GOSTs, but made them voluntary. All GOSTs and construction norms and rules (Russian abbreviation SNIP) were also frozen, that is, made no longer subject to updating until 2010, or until they were replaced by technical regulations. Although the intention was to make Russian industry more competitive by freeing it from the outdated standards, Rostekhregulirovanie and the construction industry were stridently opposed to the move and it was reversed last year.
Meanwhile, only two new technical regulations, “On the Safety of Auto Transport Emissions” and “On Gasoline Requirements,” were written after 2002, in spite of 500 million rubles' funding of the technical regulation.
Now the GOST system is again being developed, and technical regulations are becoming addenda to GOSTs. Business will support the initiative, as long as the standards are voluntary, stated Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs president Alexander Shokhin
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 11, 2008
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