The objective of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement and Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement is to ensure that technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures issued by different countries are non-discriminatory and do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade. At the same time, it recognises the country’s right to implement measures to achieve legitimate policy objectives towards the protection of human health and safety and that of the environment. Under the TBT and SPS Agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), member countries of WTO are required to report to the WTO, Geneva all the proposed technical regulations that could affect trade with other Member countries.  For India, the Notifications are issued by the following Ministries / Regulators:

WTO Notifications -  Trade Policy Division, Ministry of Commerce

SPS (Food Safety Notifications) – Food Safety & Standards Authority of  India

SPS (Plant Protection)  - Department of Agriculture Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare

SPS (Animal Health )  - Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairy & Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture

Enquiry Points

To see the TBT / SPS Enquiry Points of India, click here. The Enquiry points will answer all reasonable inquiries from other members and interested parties concerning standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures.

To see the current TBT  Notifications issued by India,click here

To see the current  SPS Notifications issued by India,click here

To see the past TBT  Notifications issued by India,click here

To see the past SPS Notifications issued by India, click here

BIS, the WTO-TBT Enquiry point of India disseminates electronically the TBT/SPS Notifications issued by other countries to the national stakeholders, to review and comment on notifications that can affect their trade interests. The Notifications currently under public comments can be viewed on the BIS website.

Month / Year wise lists of previous TBT/SPS notifications  issued by other countries can be viewed here.

Click here to view the TBT Enquiry Point of different member countries of WTO.

Click here to view the SPS Enquiry Point of different member countries of WTO.

Interested organizations and individuals may send their request stating the concerned TBT Notification. Comments on the documents needs to be sent to the Enquiry Point as soon as possible preferably a fortnight before the expiry of the period of comments. Thereafter, BIS will communicate the comments to the Ministry of Commerce for onward transmission to the concerned Government.

• TBT/SPS Notifications now under public comments

TBT information management system provide the details of the notification issued by member countries under WTO website for comments within 60 days. The user may Click to see the TBT/SPS Notifications issued those are at present under public comments through the basic search engine by choosing the date of distribution 60 days preceding the date of search.

Interested stakeholders may also access to all the TBT Notifications from Documents Online  of the WTO website.

            Key contact person:  Head (IR&TISD),

             Bureau of Indian Standards,Manak Bhawan,9 B.S.Z Marg

             New Delhi – 110 002 or

             email at tisd@bis.gov.in