Accra, Aug. 10, GNA - Mrs. Gifty Ohene-Konadu, Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiative on Friday called for the strengthening of the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) to become a world-class standards setting institution. She said standard was a fundamental and common acceptance to success of every country's development and that was what GBS should be helped to achieve.

Speaking at the launch of the 40th anniversary of GSB in Accra, the Deputy Minister explained that ensuring product and service specifications underpinned international trade and that enabled trillions of dollars of goods and services to flow across borders regardless of language barriers of business parties. The 40th anniversary is under the theme: "Setting the Pace for Standards and Quality" and it recognises standards as the linchpin of the country's effort at industrialization and integration into global economy.

Mrs. Ohene-Konadu recognised the achievements of GSB since its establishment in promoting standardisation to local enterprises by introducing standards and specifications and indicated that despite their achievements there was more to be done, especially at the moment that Ghana was implementing programmes and projects aimed at launching Ghana into the league of agro-industrial and middle income countries. She said the Ministry was promoting and enhancing the application of standardisation and had developed a national five-year strategic plan for standards and that required institutional upgrading of the GSB to enable it become internationally competitive.

There was the need to enforce standards in domestic market to protect the health and safety of consumers through the effective development and enforcement of standards and promoting the use of weighing scales for trading activities.

Mrs. Ohene-Konadu noted that the Ministry would soon undertake a nationwide sensitization and educational campaign on the use of bar codes by exporters in planning and execution of their export orders. The campaign, she said would also target consumers, owners of supermarkets and the general public on the use of bars when importing and their significance in consumption patterns. She noted that these interventions by the Ministry were to improve the efficiency of GSB to promote standardisation and assured GSB of the Ministry's support in ensuring that they achieve their dream. Mrs. Ohene-Konadu unveiled GSB's new logo and anniversary poster.

Mr. Adu Darkwa, Executive Director of GSB said standards and standardisation remained one of the priorities in the efforts to achieve economic growth and sustainable development. He said the Board's vision was to become the leading national standards body in Africa to complement the goal of Championing Africa Excellence and contribute towards the enhancement of quality of life of Ghanaian.

He said the Board was undergoing re-engineering to promote greater awareness of the usage of Ghana standards, improve the involvement in regional and international standardisation activities, timely delivery of Ghana standards to meet current future needs of stakeholders and ensure wider adoption of Ghanaian standards in technical regulations. "For our 40th anniversary, we should champion the necessary building blocks of efficient technical infrastructure that facilitated trade through increased market access in metrology, standardisation and conformity assessment".

Mr. Darkwa called on regulators, government industry, consumers, professional bodies, and researchers and technical bodies to assist in enhancing awareness and promote activities on the importance of standards.

Seven past executive directors who were chairpersons of the Board since its establishment were acknowledged for their contribution to the success of the Board.

Activities lined up for the celebration include a float, radio and TV programmes and lectures.