NCRA prevents $250 million worth of goods from being placed on shelves for sale in 2024

For the year 2024, the National Compliance and Regulatory Authority (NCRA) prevented $250 million worth of goods from being placed on the shelves in the marketplace, which were found to be in breach of established standards.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NCRA, Dr Lorice Edwards Brown, told JIS News that the NCRA conducted more than 6,000 inspections of products in Jamaica for the period, including those coming from abroad.

In addition, she said more than 222 enforcement actions were taken, including the withdrawal of 193,000 products for sale in retail outlets.

“This is because the NCRA saw that something was wrong and prevented the Jamaican public from using those products at that time. What this means is that products which were detained, they had some form of breaches, and the NCRA was able to spot those products, take them from the marketplace, to ensure that the importers or the producers fix them if they can be fixed,” Edwards Brown explained.

During this period the NCRA also received ISO/IEC 17020: 2012 standard accreditation.

“What this means is we have received independent assessment. That indicates that the NCRA can conduct inspection in fairness to all. We are a respected authority and our inspections are credible,” she said.

The NCRA is a statutory body that falls under the Ministry of Industry, investment and Commerce.

Under component 5a of the Strategic Public Sector Transformation project, the Regulatory Division of the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) has been separated by Cabinet Decision number 27/15 to become the NCRA.

Notably, the NCRA attained legal status as a statutory body in June 2023 with the promulgation of the NCRA Act, 2023, and implementation of the status of the NCRA as a body corporate became effective January 15, 2024.

“We achieved the NCRA Act being passed, that is very important to us, so we are now a body corporate and our organisation is empowered to carry out regulatory functions, which is through the registration of establishments, the monitoring and inspection of commodities – those are the products coming in from the ports of entry. Once they have a standard, the NCRA is responsible for doing those checks, and we also do enforcement actions where these products, whether locally produced or imported, are found to be not in compliance with the standards,” the CEO said.

The NCRA is responsible for registering pre-packaged food establishments, registering importers and local manufacturers of goods for which compulsory standards exist, inspecting goods at the ports of entry and in the domestic market, as well as undertaking responsibility for the verification of weighing and measuring devices used in trade, and conducting petrol sampling.

Follow The Gleaner on X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.