SASECT Trade Facilitation Week: Sanitary/ Phytosanitary and Technical Barriers to Trade Bangkok

IPS Research Officer Raveen Ekanayake was invited as a resource person to assist and advise the Sri Lankan delegation at the SASEC Trade Facilitation Week: Sanitary/Phytosanitary (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) held in Thailand. The meeting, co-organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) was held on 1-3 December 2014 in Bangkok, Thailand.

It was a follow up to the brainstorming meeting on SPS and TBT challenges and priorities held among SASEC member countries in Bangkok in November 2013. The meeting discussed current and potential contributions of international organizations in harmonization of standards, setting of regional standards, and facilitation of mutual recognition arrangements/conformity assessments. It also reached broad agreements on the terms of reference for national diagnostics studies in each of the SASEC countries identifying priority potential export items facing SPS and TBT measures, and broadly endorsed the establishment of a SASEC SPS and TBT Subgroup.