World Standards Day Celebrated in Belize

Rodolfo Gutierrez

World Standards Day is celebrated annually on October fourteenth and today, the Belize Bureau of Standards held an expo at the Biltmore Plaza in Belize City. The event follows a regional standards meeting held just last week in Belize. Today, private and public sector agencies participated and showcased how standards are utilized within its systems to increase the quality of products and services. Consumer protection Liaison Officer of the Bureau, Rodolfo Gutierrez told News Five more about the purpose of the event.

Rodolfo Gutierrez, Consumer protection Liaison officer, Bureau of Standards

“The objective of having them here today is really to depict how standards are being utilized within their systems and processes. At the end of the day, you have to understand that by adapting standards within your business, it not only creates that confidence that consumers need to feel when buying a product or getting a service. It puts you at a different level in terms of competitiveness, especially in the international markets where everything is so fierce. So what they are doing is actually showing people, we invited a lot of students to come over today and the general public for that matter, for them to have the opportunity to meet these different booth owners and have them explain what they do in their line of work and how standards is affecting them and how standards is actually utilized within their processes. Standards are normally voluntary. If you are talking about mandatory standards it is more a regulation where it is part of our law. We do have some standards that are mandatory for this country and as an agency we have to ensure that we go out there and do market surveillance and ensure that we enforce these standards. But a lot of these standards utilized are voluntary for them to be able to be competitive out there. by them adapting these standards, it makes them to create more quality, they will be more profitable and it will allow them to create more business.”