The Armenian National Institute of Standards (SARM) as well as standardization organizations and specialists throughout the world each year on October 14 celebrate the World Standards Day to value and appreciate tremendous activities on development of voluntary International Standards that facilitate trade, spread knowledge and disseminate technological advances. Technical standards, like those published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), serve as a means of mitigating climate change now, while offering the potential to reduce its effects in the future as new technologies are developed and mature. Increasing human activity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions are raising the earth's average temperature and consequences have an impact on climate change. Experts and scientists agree to say that a dramatic climate change would have enormous developmental, economic, social and environmental stresses on our planet.

Armenia is not an exception from the global environmental concerns and as a developing country faces even more difficulties to address the environmental issues. Moreover, the economic development of Armenia affected also by given world economic and financial crisis, blockade of Armenian borders by its neighboring countries Turkey and Azerbaijan, slowdown in industrial production volumes.

This year World Standards Day has perceived as an event for raising awareness and appreciation of National and International Standards as the solution to the given problems. To underline the importance and potential of standards in economic development the Prime Minister of Armenia Mr. Tigran Sargsyan and the Minister of Economy Mr. Nerses Yeritcyan, guests from industry, trade, scientific and non-governmental organizations have been welcomed in the National Institute of Standards.

Mr. Sargsyan and Mr. Yeritcyan visited the Standardization Department, National Database of Standards, Testing Laboratory and Certification Department of the National Institute of Standards, where the Director Mr. Yenok Azaryan and appropriate specialists presented the specific activities and issues of each unit. The SARM currently maintains a Database of about 20000 National and International Standards – AST, GOST, GOST-R, ISO, and EN. It provides also with standardization information services to 110 biggest enterprises in Armenia. The Institute publishes Annual Catalogs on Standards, as well as quarterly bulletins on Standardization activities. Actually, the main emphasis in developing of new standards is to harmonize them with International standards. The current ratio of harmonization between National and International Standards in force makes about 30%. In addition, recently the SARM has renovated its official web-site (http://www.sarm.am/) and introduced a new standards' search catalog by making the standard selling procedures easier and comfortable.

Another achievement of SARM is that recently it has revised the existing National Mirror Committees and SARM memberships in ISO technical committees. It has been done based on stakeholder participatory approach. However, the technical work in TCs needs to be more active, which requires additional financing from industry and Government.

SARM has also the most technically innovative and well-equipped testing laboratory in Armenia with three branches in the Northern, Western and Southern regions. The equipment recently has been granted by International donor organizations. That is why SARM is also the biggest and the most respected certification body in Armenia, with the exact and equitable certification services for importing and exporting enterprises.

During the meeting with the SARM staff and invited guests, the Minister of Economy mentioned, “Standards and standardization have very important mission for Armenian economic development. The standards promote investments and create technological innovations. Nevertheless, Armenia currently has a drastic need for reforming the whole field of Standardization, Metrology, Accreditation and Market Surveillance. The reforms will be initiated at the beginning of the next year.”

At the meeting with the specialists from industrial sector, business and experts Director Mr. Azaryan presented the current global problems related with climate change and energy management. He has mentioned that ISO's motto “Tackling climate change through standards” for this World Standards Day invented for underlining the possibility and potential of standards to serve as solution for many environmental issues. The environmental concerns are among the urgent issues in Armenia as well, where there is a high concentration of mining industries, many cases of exceedances of maximum allowable concentrations of pollution, ecological disaster zones, etc. Implementation of international and national standards in the field of ecology, energy and natural resources based economy would provide with solutions to the problems.

The Prime Minister in his speech congratulated the standardization specialists on their professional day and mentioned that International and European standards are important and effective tool for dealing with many social and economical problems, such as native products competitiveness, implementation of innovative technologies, reduction of technical barriers in trade, economy of all kind of resources. Participants agreed on the importance of wide application of international standards in the economy of Armenia.

In today’s world we need to have a high level of expectation that things will work the way we expect them to work. 

Boosting the free movement of services by facilitating the definition of services standards at European level is also the aim of CEN and CENELEC. An effective services market is of utmost importance in generating growth and jobs in Europe.

"Top Ten Award" organization with GIC (Guardian Independent Certification) organization organized award which attended National Institute of Standards delegation

Republic of Armenia established, put into effect the national standards list  (according to order  Minister of Ministry of Economy N 458 - A date 17.06.2010).