APEC recognizes RI accreditation body

JAKARTA (JP): The Pacific Cooperation Council (PAC), an accreditation body established by APEC member countries, will formally recognize certification and accreditation issued by the Indonesian standardization board.

The chief of the National Standardization Agency, Herudi Kartowisastro, said recognition was agreed upon in the signing of a multilateral agreement at a PAC meeting in Bali on Thursday.

He said that with the signing of the agreement, all APEC members would recognize certification and accreditation issued by the Indonesian agency.

"The recognition means that the agency has successfully passed peer evaluation and fulfills international standards," he said in a statement.

Herudi said that Indonesia and Thailand, which also signed the agreement on Thursday, were the eighth and ninth countries respectively to sign such an agreement, which were first introduced three years ago.

The first countries to sign agreements were Australia, Canada, China and Japan, in January 1998, followed by Malaysia and Singapore in November 1998 and South Korea in July 1999, he said.

PAC, established in 1993, is a regional cooperation forum between accreditation bodies in APEC countries. Its members comprise 19 accreditation bodies in the Asia Pacific.

The meeting in Bali was attended by 50 delegations as well as observers from the United States, Germany and the Association of South East Asian Nation's (ASEAN) secretariat. (10)