State Committee on Standards announces all-Ukrainian quality contest
Unlike Russia, where similar contests have been held by the state for five years, this is Ukraine’s maiden one, apart from regional contests for which Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts have quite a reputation. According to predictions by the State Committee on Standards, Metrology, and Certification (SCS), the contest will attract between 600 and 700 companies of various forms of ownership, allowing them to measure their performance against the existing yardsticks of quality. The application procedure is very simple, Director of the Ukrainian Institute of Quality Oleksandr Yanishevsky told The Day, with companies having only to submit their applications and pay fees ranging from 100 to 500 hryvnias. A benchmark evaluation of how companies measure up to the European model of perfection in business, notably, the extent of their leadership positions and abilities to fully meet customer demand, will be done by a jury comprising representatives of ministries and agencies along with experts who are currently undergoing the appropriate training. According to the organizers of the contest, its objective is “to improve quality and competitiveness of domestic goods and ensure the implementation by Ukrainian producers of state-of-the-art world and European methods of quality control.” The contest is held in the wake of the Ukrainian president’s order On Measures to Improve the Quality of Domestic Production.
Speaking of the quality of Ukrainian goods, domestic pundits agree that the major brake on raising the inferior quality of Ukrainian products was the lack of a clear and consistent government policy that would stimulate producers to care above all for the quality of their output. Moreover, there are still very few quality control specialists in industry, while the positive expertise of a handful of successful companies has not been made available to other enterprises. As Marianne Nubla, coordinator of the TACIS project on legal issues, remarked at the international conference Food Safety held recently in Kyiv, the mandatory certification of food products and inputs carried out in Ukraine very often is not balanced in terms of matching food safety and economic expediency. Meanwhile, such a situation is history, the SCS First Deputy Head Hennady Myroniuk argued. Today, SCS is confident, the progress can be seen with the naked eye. As of October 1, 2001, new national quality control standards, virtually identical to international ones, have come into force in Ukraine. These standards comprise a guidebook for quality control at enterprises as well as for training and upgrading their staff, he maintains.
In the West, issues of commodity quality are ever in the focus of economic interests of states and ordinary citizens, as has been evidenced by surveys conducted in various countries. At present, the quality of goods has become an overriding criterion for buyers, while ten years ago only five in ten persons polled held this view. Ukraine was no exception, with domestic customers showing increasing interest in the quality of goods prior to buying them at markets or in stores.
Interestingly, Halyna Huberna, Doctor of Sciences in economics, believes that, if a customer got a bad deal buying cheaper poor quality goods, it was his/her own problem, as the choice was entirely the consumer’s. Legal producers, unlike those working in the shadows, will always offer goods for more affluent buyers which have higher prices and quality, as well as cheaper goods, she says. Mere enforcement of quality standards by the government, in this expert’s opinion, will not improve quality. A breakthrough will occur only when production and competition begin to grow. This has been shown by the facts. With several Ukrainian food companies competing for customers, it is quite obvious that to lower quality will lead to the loss of markets. According to TACIS, the implementation of the NASSR quality control system could be a shot in the arm for several quality food producers. The system breaks up production into several stages to ensure that, for example, a low quality can of food or a carton of milk does not pop up in a consignment of goods.
