India resets QCO roadmap to align standards with lab readiness, ease friction with trading partners

Dear reader, as 2025, a year of global tumult and volatility, rolls by, Mint's reporters and columnists look around the corner on what is coming in 2026—to help you know what to expect and prepare for it. Tell us what you think at [email protected].The Centre is shaping a wider and more deliberate standards strategy for 2026, moving to realign Quality Control Orders (QCOs) with actual testing and laboratory capacity while easing friction with key trading partners.

The shift follows a series of QCO withdrawals over the past few months and growing scrutiny at the World Trade Organization (WTO), prompting a recalibration that ties future QCOs to laboratory readiness, phased transitions, and clearer justification for regulatory intervention.The new approach marks one of the most comprehensive resets of India’s quality regime since the QCO framework began expanding rapidly after 2014. The government had earlier set an ambitious target to eventually bring 2,000–2,500 products under mandatory quality norms.

For FY26 alone, officials had planned to notify over 700 additional products under the QCO regime.To operationalize the expansion, a meeting involving 37 ministries was held in February 2025, chaired by the consumer Affairs ministry, the controlling authority of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Each ministry was tasked with identifying products that could be brought under QCO.In January 2024, the then Union Minister for Consumer Affairs Piyush Goyal had underscored the centrality of quality, stating compliance with high-quality standards would help India achieve its ambition of becoming a developed nation, and outlined plans to substantially expand the QCO framework.