How developing countries benefit from standardization

"Giving fish" is one way of assisting developing countries. By implementing International Standards and participating in their development, developing countries learn how to fish for themselves.

Developing countries generally have scarce resources. Therefore, the need to invest them wisely is more acute than in stronger economies because there is no cushion for absorbing mistakes. Making the wrong choice may have serious economic or social consequences, as, for example, when:

• an imported technology turns out to be unsuitable for local conditions and drains the investment in an industrial development programme
• an effort to export local products comes to nothing because they do not meet regulations or consumer criteria on foreign markets
• precious foreign currency is wasted on importing over-sophisticated health care products because technical criteria for evaluating the market offerings are not available locally.

The International Standards developed by ISO offer developing countries practical solutions to such problems because they represent a reservoir of technological know-how and of product, performance, quality, safety and environmental specifications. These standards have the advantage of being backed by an international consensus on the state of the art. Implementing ISO standards brings advantages such as the following to developing countries:

• avoiding the waste of resources by "reinventing the wheel"
• transferring state-of-the-art technological know-how
• supplying criteria for making reasoned choices when evaluating foreign market offerings, whether of technology or consumer products
• safeguarding public health and safety by establishing a base of requirements for application to local or imported products in these regulated areas
• providing internationally accepted specifications that can be applied to the development, manufacturing and marketing of local goods and services, thus raising the country's ability to compete on export markets worldwide.

By actually participating in the development of International Standards, developing countries can realize other benefits, such as the opportunity to:

• acquire technological know-how directly
• influence the technical content of standards important to their economy
• gain "hands-on" experience in standardization work that can be put to use in building up their own national infrastructures.