During the 2018 Joint IAF-ILAC Annual Meetings in Singapore, at a signing ceremony, the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), and the World Bank signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The World Bank is an international development institution established by Articles of Agreement adopted by its member countries. The World Bank’s overarching mission is to reduce poverty, improve living conditions, and promote sustainable and comprehensive development in its developing member countries.
With the MoU, IAF, ILAC and the World Bank have committed to share knowledge and experience on quality infrastructure (QI) reforms, specifically in the field of conformity assessment body accreditation, to better support client economies in the development and strengthening of national QIs. A strong national QI aids in reducing barriers to international trade, facilitating global technical cooperation, and encouraging industrial development and entrepreneurship.
It is anticipated that specific areas of cooperation will include supporting the design and implementation of QI reforms; participating in signatories’ knowledge sharing events such as seminars, workshops and meetings; producing joint documents and peer reviewing the documents of other signatories in the field of QI; and promoting the importance of mutual acceptance of conformity assessment results in both the voluntary and regulatory domains.