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India’s national accreditation system under the Quality Council of India (QCI) has been ranked 5th in the world in the recent Global Quality Infrastructure Index (GQII) 2021 which ranks 184 economies based on quality infrastructure (QI). India’s overall QI system ranking continues to be in the Top 10 at the 10th position, with the standardisation system (under BIS) at 9th and the metrology system (under NPL-CSIR) at the 21st position in the world.

The GQII measures the relative development of countries’ QI. A formula calculates a score for each country based on its position in the sub-rankings for metrology, standards and accreditation. Geographically, the top 25 QI systems are located in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific, with some exceptions, such as India (10th), Brazil (13th), Australia (14th), Turkey (16th), Mexico (18th) and South Africa (20th).

As per the government, the rise in India’s accreditation ranking is attributed to the steady growth of conformity assessment bodies (CABs) under the national accreditation system. These are testing & medical labs, product certification bodies, and management systems certification bodies.

The GQII rankings are published and presented post-facto for each year based on the data collected till the end of that year. The 2021 rankings are based on data till the end of December 2021, collected and analysed through 2022. It is an initiative on metrology, standardisation, accreditation and related services, supported by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany.