The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has released its annual performance report for Financial Year 2019/2020, revealing products that non-compliant to standards on the market.
Delivering the report at Uganda Media Centre Monday morning, UNBS Executive Director, Dr. Ben Manyindo, said: “Cosmetics and body care products topped UNBS list of non-complying products followed by beverages, building materials and food stuffs with most results registered in the central, western, eastern and northern regions respectively.”
He noted that tthe year presented to the agency an unprecedented challenge imposed by COVID-19 that has made them rethink the way they do business.
“However, we have used this crisis to harness opportunities for businesses seeking standardisation services,” Manyindo said.
He revealed that UNBS expanded presence at additional border points that include Mirama Hills OSBP; Elegu OSBP and Mpondwe.
The UNBS boss added that 153,256 inspections of products under compulsory standards were done meeting 83% of the set target for the year.
62,551 inspections were undertaken under the PVoC program, an increase of 27,000 compared to the previous year, he said.
“We registered 11% increase in market surveillance inspections with 7,345 inspections conducted in 2019/20 against 6,646 inspections in FY 2018/19. The Inspections conducted covered over 56% of the entire country,” Manyindo said.
He further revealed that construction of the Food Safety Laboratories at UNBS Bweyogerere Headquarters were completed during the year and are now fully operational. UNBS labs are internationally accredited which means the test results are recognised globally,” he noted.
He added: “We registered increase in efficiency in terms of turn round time from 25 days in 2019 to 18 days in 2020 in line with our promise to customers of delivering lab test reports within 21 days upon submission of a product sample for testing.”
Manyindo also noted that UNBS simplified select food standards into easy to use guidelines & translated them into the most widely spoken Ugandan languages; Luganda, Luo, Ateso, Lumasaaba, Lunyoro-Kitara and others, with support from the Commonwealth Standards Network.
In FY 2019/20, he added, UNBS developed 505 new standards bringing the total number of standards for use today, to 3948.The standards developed support key sectors of the economy and act as a catalyst for economic growth .
“1068 MSMEs visited UNBS, were provided with technical advisory services (compared to 929 MSMEs in FY2018/19), to build their capacity to apply standards & produce products that conform to standards thus contributing to government’s export promotion strategy.
We witnessed an exponential increase in the number of MSMEs seeking certification. During the FY 2019/20 we registered 1168 MSMEs and visited 304 MSMEs for on-site technical assistance and gap analysis,” Manyindo said.
He added: “We recorded an increase from 1,350 product certification permits in FY2018/19 to 2,705 permits in FY2019/20. 62 permits were registered under systems certification. All UNBS certified products were able to access the wider EAC market.”
He added that by March 2020, only two companies had been certified to manufacture Hand sanitizers. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, by 30th June 2020, 209 companies (with 254 brands) had been certified, he said.
