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Digital marks will be key in fighting supply of fake products – UNBS
Beauty and personal care products manufacturers say charges digital conformity marks, which are being piloted have presented cost challenges to the sector. PHOTO / FILE
What you need to know:
- UNBS says the programme aligns with its agenda to facilitate trade, enforce standards, and protect public health, safety, and the environment
Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has said the new digital conformity marking programme, now under pilot, will be key in providing a track-and-trace mechanism to distinguish between genuinely certified and substandard commodities in the supply chain.
The programme, UNBS said in a statement, aligns with its agenda of facilitating trade, enforcing standards, and protecting public health, safety, and the environment from hazardous and substandard products.
“The digital conformity marking programme leverages on technology that allows the public to … verify if a product is genuinely certified by UNBS. The programme also facilitates trade and rids the market of unfair competition by eliminating the misuse of the UNBS [QMark] by uncertified manufacturers and ensuring that only certified goods access the market,” the statement reads in part.
In May, UNBS started piloting the programme among beauty and personal care products manufacturers, one of the most impacted regarding the manufacture of substandard products.
UNBS has previously banned and withdrawn several beauty and personal care products from the market, some of which are linked to cancer.
In December last year, UNBS maintained a ban – which was first announced in 2016 - on beauty and personal care that contain mercury and hydroquinone.
The ban was announced after a survey had indicated that 31 percent of samples conducted on 32 product brands including Clinic Whitening Body Lotion, Nature Secrete Lightening Moisturising Body Lotion, B Light Extra Fort Lightening Body Milk and Fair and White Britening and Lightening Carrot, among others, had been found to contain hydroquinone.
In the statement, UNBS also indicated that details of the digital conformity marking programme, which involves issuing digital marks or stamps to certified commodities, providing consumers with proof that the products meet standards and are of high quality, had been shared during a stakeholder engagement at the Ministry of Finance recently.
The programme, implemented in partnership with SICPA, is part of a larger plan in which UNBS is seeking to curb the supply and entry of substandard goods on the market.
A surveillance report by UNBS conducted between 2017 and 2018 noted that more than 54 percent of goods on the market were fake, highlighting that foods and beverages, cosmetics and chemicals, electronics and electro appliances, and construction products, were the most impacted sub-sectors.
However, in its annual report for the period ended June 2023, UNBS noted that the percentage of substandard goods had increased to 58 percent, presenting several challenges to the economy and consumers.
Therefore, under the digital conformity marking programme, UNBS noted that the stamps, which contain information such as product details, the standard under which it is assessed, certification date, batch number and manufacturers’ name, among others, will be key in helping manufacturers, traders and consumers to verify product certification through an app-enabled system.
