Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen said for the first time in the history of Sri Lanka’s consumer well-being sphere, Sri Lanka is commencing its journey towards the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP), based on the partnership of two apex Lankan institutions.
The Minister’s speech which was read out by a senior official of the ministry at a workshop on Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA), organized by the Consumer Affairs Authority of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), noted that Sri Lanka commenced a new journey on consumer well-being with UNGCP as not only a mere response to growing domestic consumer concerns but also due to Sri Lanka’s strong commitment to consumer well being in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Goals that the world is aspiring as a community of responsible consumers
The event will continue for five days, before participants finally conclude on the way forward on UNGCP.
This five day session, called as Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA), focuses on pre-legal, field assessment and evaluation of our national policy of consumer well being and protection that we believe is now ready for major reforms, the minister said adding that, “I have no doubts that this is the first time that the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, the CAA and even Sri Lanka itself is undertaking such an in-depth review of safeguards of consumption of products, services and compliance at national level, which is a stepping stone for harmonization with dynamic global standards respected by 100 countries.”
It is estimated that 100 countries have already used the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP) for the design of their national consumer safeguard policies.
“I am pleased that once these Colombo deliberations are concluded and reform work begins, Sri Lanka too will become part of this huge collective of countries that successfully sourced from UNGCP to design their national consumer well being policy. This effort is of such national importance, we have facilitated the participation of thirty Sri Lankan regulatory bodies in this deliberation to sit together, and such a high level of participation by national regulatory agencies at the same time, is an institutional record of its own for the first time.
The strength of our consumer protection framework at present is largely dependent on legislations such as our Consumer Affairs Authority Act, which need revising. While these Acts introduced the much needed basic consumer safeguard framework to Sri Lanka, they do not appear to be satisfactory anymore in the face of huge changes and complexities in modern consumer trends and dynamics.”
According to the Minister, these include online purchases, new cross border consumption patterns including consumption of content such as data, and new consumer activism that looks for remedies on latest merchandise that was previously unheard of or unknown such as streaming or stored online digital content.
“For example, 70% of purchases in developed countries today are made online. Rapidly growing Asian countries too are moving fast in the same direction,”he added.
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