The ASEAN Regulatory Cooperation Project (ARCP) was launched in mid-2015 with the goal of addressing non-tariff trade barriers in the Southeast Asia by limiting divergence of chemical management regulations and encouraging regulatory cooperation and convergence among the ASEAN Member States (AMS).
Based on global principles for regulatory cooperation, the ARCP supports the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which promotes the use of good regulatory practices in the establishment of regulatory environments and encourages free and open trade and investment, while protecting human health and safety, the environment, and security.
Led by ACC, Cefic, JCIA and SCIC, the ARCP Organising Committee drives capacity building initiatives involving all the regulators and industry representatives from all the 10 AMS. We have since established a network of government and industry representatives from all AMS, which has facilitated the progress in achieving greater regulatory coherence through enhanced cooperation and coordination efforts.
In this unprecedented year in which physical workshops are not feasible, the ARCP continued its engagement efforts with the AMS via a webinar session, which was successfully held on 22 to 23 September 2020. The country host of Thailand opened the session. Mr. Supakit Boonsiri, Deputy of Director General in the Department of Industrial Works (DIW) of the Ministry of Industry (MOI), and Mr. Chaiwat Niyomkarn, the Chairman of Chemical Industrial Club in the Federation of Thai Industries, delivered welcoming remarks.
About 200 participants attended the session, including a significant extended involvement from Government representatives of different regulatory agencies and Industry representatives in each AMS. This attendance is significantly greater than the average attendance of 50 in an ARCP in person workshop. The active discussion and engagement by all the participants were evident from the many questions posted during the Q&A sessions for every agenda item. The ARCP Organising Committee will follow-up with the speakers to provide written comments to questions that could not be addressed in light of time constraints. The LATAM team overseeing the regulatory co-operation project in Latin America region also took the opportunity in joining the session to learn and exchange ideas and practices on advancing regulatory co-operation efforts.
ARCP webinar 2020 continued to build capacity and capability among AMS on the priority topics of “Alignment of Globally Harmonised System (GHS)” and “Development of Chemical Inventory (CI).” To reinforce the ASEAN guidance documents on these priority topics as relevant and useful resource references for AMS as they develop their approaches to GHS and CI, several actual case studies on the implementation by AMS and countries in other regions were actively discussed during the webinar, including:
- GHS implementation Case Study for South Korea & New Zealand;
- Chemical Inventory implementation in Vietnam by Vinachemia;
- Use of ASEAN prioritization tools in Thailand by DIW, MOI; and
- New substance notification process in Philippines by Environment Management Bureau (EMB), Philippines.
Presentations on other key topics provided valuable resources and information and broadened the perspectives of regulators and industry in AMS included:
- SAICM beyond 2020;
- Global Regulatory Landscape on New Substance Notification; and
- Effective stakeholder public consultation – a case study sharing on NICNAS Reform which was presented by the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme (AICIS), Office of Chemical Safety, Australian Department of Health.
The open sharing on good practices on public consultation process by AICIS, experiences by different AMS’ regulators in their GHS and CI implementation, and exchange of regulatory updates highlighted to AMS, the potential issues and challenges on divergence of chemical management regulations and ways they can be addressed at the earliest possible stage. The webinar experiences also revealed potential, near-term opportunities for more virtual sharing and engagements across the AMS.
In parallel, the ARCP outreach initiatives prioritize achieving recognition at ASEAN ministerial level, including through the newly formed ACCSQ (ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standards and Quality) Working Group on Industrial Chemicals (WGIC). ARCP will review emerging topics, such as new chemical notification and chemical risk assessment, to continue build capacity and capability in chemical management.
The ARCP is an effective platform in operationalising the concept of global principles for regulatory cooperation. We have seen progressive acceptance towards the adoption of GHS version-7, greater AMS uptake of the two ASEAN guidance documents, and greater AMS interest in the ASEAN prioritization tools.
This is an important step in our advocacy journey towards achieving an established regulatory environment with an aligned framework of requirements and processes that encourages free and open trade and investment while protecting human health, safety, environment and security.
More information about ARCP https://scic.sg/asean/.
Contributed by:
ARCP Organising Committee
