Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio

Pedro Pérez Vargas - Workforce inspection and Technical Regulations vigilance Coordinator

Most of the products, subject to technical regulations, must show that they comply with the respective technical regulation provisions. This confirmation arises from a document called “compliance certificate”, which is issued by certification bodies. In Colombia, the certification body must be accredited by the National Accreditation Body of Colombia (ONAC, by its acronym in Spanish).

The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism administers the “One-Stop Register for Foreign Trade” (VUCE, by its acronym in Spanish). On this platform, the importers of products, subject to technical regulations compliance, are allow to present requests of documentary approvals for the importation of said products. Once this procedure is done, the SIC evaluates the conformity certificates of the products, and grants an approval concept, when its conformity is demonstrated, allowing its further importation.

During 2014, a portion of the documents provided to VUCE were fake or adulterated. Due to the risk of this falsification, some measures were taken, for example, sending the allegedly false documents to the Office of the Attorney General (by June 2017, 65 cases had been reported, most of these identified in 2014); and, establishing a direct contact with the certification bodies to verify the authenticity of the documents. 

Notwithstanding the consequences of the previous situation, the volumes of certificates allegedly false or adulterated, exceeded the capacity of the SIC to make their evaluation. Due to this problem, we came across the urgency to have a platform that allows, in real time, to assess the authenticity of the conformity certificate with the purpose of demonstrating a product conformity. The creation of the Information System of Certificates of Conformity (SICERCO, for its acronym in Spanish) was indeed a beginning.

SICERCO is an online platform that allows the consultation of a compliance certificate issued by all the accredited certification bodies in Colombia.

Although the platform is open to public consultation, citizens are only allowed to seek for basic data of each conformity certificate, such as: issuing body, certificate holder, status of the certificate, expedition date and expiration date. In addition, Colombian entities such as the ONAC; the Ministry of Mines and Energy; the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism; the Superintendence of Public Services; and, some municipal mayors, have a user to access all the information and even consult the uploaded documents in SICERCO.

The SICERCO is created by the “SIC Resolution 41713 of June 2014”. This resolution supplements Chapter Four of Title IV of the SIC's Sole Circular. By September 2014, all the inspections and product certification bodies were registered in SICERCO. Initially, the document could only be consulted as an image on the platform, as well as some basic information such as date of issue and validity of the certificates.

With the updates received by the platform, a reference search engine has been included. This mechanism allows VUCE importing registrations analyst to validate the conformity of the products subject to compliance with technical regulations in a more efficient manner. To this end, the conformity assessment bodies should include more information, for example, a real time update of the compliance certificate status (valid, suspended, withdrawn); also, they should include the tracking information of the certifications, as well as the quantities of units certified in the case of some certification schemes in particular.

With SICERCO's help, the documentary verification carried out by the SIC is now more efficient, and faster, superseding the experience regarding false certificates within the Colombian market. The platform is a consultation tool for all entities related to quality in Colombia.

Additionally, SICERCO is a valuable input for the generation of inspection and surveillance campaigns in the market. It also allows the validation of authenticity of the documents demonstrating the conformity provided by those investigated by the SIC.

By 2019, SICERCO will be coordinated with VUCE, to make automatic validation of requests for authorization of import procedures, this being a vital need for the SIC. According to the data, in 2017 more than 38,000 import registrations were processed manually in the SIC and the 2018 is expected to close with more than 40,000 applications. It is also expected that SICERCO will send alerts to certifiers with the purpose of following up the certificates and uploading flat files, allowing searches of information in the entire body of the certificate.

SICERCO has established itself as a vital tool for monitoring and controlling products in the local market and is emerging as a benchmark for surveillance entities in the region.