" One standard, one test-accepted everywhere" is this year's theme to mark the World Standards Day, which falls Monday October 14th.

The World Standards Day is being organised to raise the awareness of the importance of global standardisation to the world economy and to promote its role in helping meet the needs of business, industry, government and consumers worldwide. The director general of the Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS), Mr Irene Joseph will be meeting members of the press today to elaborate more on the theme and activities being organised by SBS to mark this event.

In their message for the occasion the leaders of three international bodies, Messrs Mario Gilberto Cortopassi, the president of the International Standards Organisation (ISO), Yoshio Utsumi, the secretary-general of the International Telecommunication (ITU) and Sei-ichi Takayanagi of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) say that "standards and tests go hand in hand and are the key to the development of the global market."

ISO, IEC and ITU are three leading organisations which help to develop and disseminate standards and recommendations for the global market.

According to the three prominent leaders, standards give specifications or requirements for products, services, systems, processes and materials.

" Tests then verify that these standards can be met reliably over time. Once these standards are accepted broadly at an international level, they can further foster the development of a global market for the goods or services, a market built on consistent quality and consumer confidence," they explain in their message.

As a technical language understood by businesses worldwide, standards, Messrs Utsomi, Cortopassi and Takayanagi observe, may  come about to "achieve a variety of objectives, such as ensuring safety and performance, but their basic essential nature is to establish parameters to provide common technological foundation for producing goods, services and systems everywhere."

"In parallel, a common confidence-building foundation for exchanging these goods and services between buyers and seller in the global market comes from using international agreed standards and tests together to verify that the requirements of these standards are being met," the message reads.

For instant, when a testing laboratory assesses whether or not a product or a service conforms to a specific standard, it adds.

Such conformity assessment which very quality, performance and other parameters, the leaders say, help to boost the confidence of participants in the free market. Hence for international standards to make maximum contribution to achieving the objective of facilitating trade, it is important that all countries develop and adopt them.           

"The combination of standards and conformity assessment serve the, market by helping to lower barriers to trade, which results in lower manufacturing costs and to raise level between buyers and sellers," according to the message.

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