Introduction to the BIS QCOs: Why the Updates Matter
If you’re in manufacturing, importing, or exporting goods and dealing in the Indian market, you’ve probably heard about BIS and QCOs. BIS or the Bureau of Indian Standards is India’s official authority that ensures products meet quality, safety, and environmentally friendly standards. QCOs, or Quality Control Orders, are actually rules that check products before they can be sold in India.
Recently, as per the NITI Aayog’s report of the High-Level Committee on Non-Financial Regulatory Reforms (HLC-NFRR), BIS has made some important changes to QCOs, especially for Raw Materials, Intermediate Products & Components, which are mainly the building blocks of manufacturing. These are not finished products that consumers directly use, but they play a crucial role in making things such as electronics, footwear, steel, as well as other finished products.
The big goal behind these updates, as stated by the Bureau of Indian Standards, after careful consideration, is quite simple:
In short, BIS wants to focus on the products that matter most for safety and quality, rather than checking every single ingredient or input along the way. Let us explore and understand what these recent BIS changes mean for the industry and what the future prospects are that BIS aims to affirm.
What Are QCOs and How Did They Affect Industry?
QCOs (Quality Control Orders) are basically understood as rules that make sure products meet safety and quality standards before they reach the Indian market. Earlier, BIS applied these rules not just to finished products that consumers use, but also to raw materials and intermediate products, which mainly include things such as plastics, metals, fibers, or components that are used to make the final product.
While the intention was to ensure quality, applying QCOs to these building blocks caused some real problems for businesses:
While the old QCOs were meant to protect consumers, they sometimes made it unnecessarily complicated for the industry.
Why BIS Changed the Rules
The new approach focuses mainly on finished goods and excludes the raw materials, and intermediate products that have been excluded from the provisions of the QCOs, in accordance with the following criteria:
BIS decided to focus its regulation where it really matters and reduce unnecessary hurdles for manufacturers and exporters. This was done after thoroughly analyzing these criteria in order to align India’s quality framework with International practices, minimize impact on manufacturing competitiveness, strengthen the national quality ecosystem, and support innovation as well as ease of doing business in the Indian economy.
What Has BIS Decided: The Key Changes
BIS has made some important updates to the QCO rules in order to make market functioning easier for manufacturers, MSMEs, as well as exporters. Instead of testing every raw material or intermediate product, BIS is now focusing on finished products that directly affect consumer safety or quality. Here’s a simple summary of the key changes:
| Categories Reformed | What Changed | Reason for Change | Effective From |
| Synthetic fibres & yarns | QCO removed | These do not directly affect consumer safety | 15 November 2025 |
| Plastics & polymers | QCO removed | Unprocessed plastics and polymers are safe | |
| Base metals (copper, aluminium, nickel) | QCO removed | No direct risk; widely used in industries like automotive, construction, and engineering | |
| Steel (certain categories) | QCO suspended (except for construction & pressure vessels) | Raw or semi-finished steel is safe | |
| Steel import process | NOC & monitoring removed | Simplifies the import of non-QCO steel grades | |
| Footwear & electronics components | QCO removed for intermediate inputs | Intermediates are safe; allow design flexibility | |
| Upcoming QCOs | Implementation deferred | BIS will review alignment with global standards |
Therefore, the BIS is removing unnecessary rules on raw materials and intermediate products, which means less paperwork, faster production, and lower costs, without compromising consumer safety.
How These Changes Help Manufacturers
BIS’s recent updates are designed to make market operations quite smooth as well as easier for businesses while still keeping products safe. Here’s how manufacturers benefit from this big move by the Bureau of Indian Standards:
What You Need to Do
If you are a manufacturer, importer, or exporter, here are a few ways to stay on top of the new BIS QCO changes: