what we do

Domestic Quality Monitoring

The Agency administers and monitors the quality and safety of products covered under compulsory standards on the market through inspections and related activities under the Import Quality Monitoring and Domestic Quality Monitoring Departments in line with World Trade Organization Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO TBT) Agreement guidelines and other international and regional best practices.

Locally manufactured products are monitored by the Domestic Quality Monitoring Department through its inspections activities. The inspection activities include factory visits, open market surveillances, spot checks and complaints investigations. The mandate of these inspections only extends to products that are regulated under the Compulsory Standards Act.

Currently the Agency administers 60 compulsory standards. A recommendation has been made to declare an additional 47 products to be covered under this law.

Market Surveillance

A market surveillance is a post market activity aimed at ensuring continued compliance to compulsory standards once the products have left the border or the local factory and are placed on the market. This is aimed at protecting the public from any unsafe products whose integrity may be compromised by poor transportation or storage conditions, inadequate shelf life monitoring, or indeed adulteration with undesired materials.

The Agency conducts market surveillances on local and imported products. This is done by surveying the market and picking samples from different trading places. Physical inspections are conducted for some products while others are taken for laboratory analysis to investigate whether they comply with compulsory standards.