Reporting snapshot · 1 October 2026. Pakistan's Ministry of Science and Technology has asked the federal cabinet's Economic Coordination Committee to revisit its 24 September 2025 decision on automobile standards and to amend three related notifications that the ministry says duplicate the standards-setting mandate of the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA). The ECC deferred the agenda on 1 October and asked the climate change ministry's committee to weigh in first. The account below draws on the Express Tribune's reporting of the ECC agenda, the text of the SROs the S&T ministry wants amended, the PSQCA Act 1996, and the Motor Vehicles Industry Development Act 2025 draft. No new procurement or rule has been issued since the two ECC approvals earlier in September.
What happened
The Ministry of Science and Technology has asked the Economic Coordination Committee to withdraw or partially amend the decision of Case 172/22/2025, dated 24 September 2025, on the formulation of environmental, safety and quality standards for imported vehicles, The Express Tribune reported on 1 October 2026. The ministry’s written argument is that the September 2025 decision and three notifications flowing from it overlap with the standards-setting mandate given to PSQCA by the Rules of Business 1973 and the PSQCA Act 1996.
The first notification the ministry wants changed is SRO 61(1)/2026, dated 15 January 2026, issued by the Ministry of Commerce. The ministry wants Clause 11 of that SRO amended and certain phrases deleted. The second is Clause (xvi) of SRO 1895, dated 30 September 2025, issued by the Ministry of Commerce. The third is a separate order from the Ministry of Industries and Production, EDB/Auto/Import/WP-29/2025, also dated 30 September 2025, which the Industries and Production ministry would withdraw. The fourth item, less of a notification than a process step, is the 16 March 2026 meeting decision requiring PSQCA to obtain a no-objection certificate from the Engineering Development Board (EDB) for the registration of automobile pre-shipment inspection agencies, which the S&T ministry says duplicates powers already held by PSQCA under Section 8(xxiii) of the PSQCA Act and under SRO 2443 dated 16 December 2025.
In its ECC summary, the S&T ministry said the PSQCA was a statutory body working under the administrative control of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and that the PSQCA Act 1996 gave the body the sole mandate to formulate, adopt and notify standards (including automobile standards), undertake conformity assessment activities, register inspection bodies and monitor product quality, the Tribune reported. The ministry said serial 36 of Schedule-I of the Rules of Business 1973, sub-rules 12, 30, 31 and 32, specifically named the formulation of standards as the PSQCA’s mandate.
The ECC considered the summary and deferred the agenda, directing that the climate change ministry’s existing committee on the matter be asked for its views before any proposal is sent back to the ECC, the Tribune reported.
Where PSQCA fits in Pakistan’s regulatory map
PSQCA was set up under the PSQCA Act 1996 as the country’s national standards body. The S&T ministry’s note to the ECC argues that PSQCA has, under its statutory mandate, already taken “comprehensive initiatives for the development and adoption of automobile standards” covering buses, cars and tractors. The ministry said it has already secured federal cabinet approval for the standards of public service vehicles (buses) that PSQCA formulated on the prime minister’s directives.
In its brief, the S&T ministry also pointed out that the Ministry of Industries had sent a draft Motor Vehicles Industry Development Act (MVIDA) 2025 for review. The S&T ministry said it had issued a no-objection to that draft in an office memorandum dated 18 July 2025, but withdrew the no-objection on 16 April 2026 because the draft was inconsistent with the prevailing legal framework and the EDB’s mandate under the Rules of Business. The ECC deferred the agenda before reaching the merits.
The ministry’s claim is that the three SROs and the 16 March 2026 process decision amount to “overlapping of functions and encroachment on the mandate of the Ministry of S&T/PSQCA”, the Tribune reported.
What the September 2025 decision actually changed
The S&T ministry’s brief frames the dispute as a clash between two tracks that opened in the autumn of 2025. The first is the 24 September 2025 ECC decision on “Removal of Quantitative Restriction on Commercial Import of Used Vehicles”, which the Ministry of Commerce had moved and which the federal cabinet subsequently ratified. The ECC proposals approved that day created the conditions for an avalanche of standards activity.
The second is the Ministry of Industries and Production’s notification EDB/Auto/Import/WP-29/2025, dated 30 September 2025, adopting environmental, safety and quality standards for imported vehicles and linking them to UNECE WP.29, the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations. The Ministry of Commerce’s SRO 1895, also dated 30 September 2025, sits in the same stream.
The third is the 15 January 2026 SRO 61(1)/2026, which the S&T ministry wants amended, and SRO 2443 dated 16 December 2025, which the ministry argues already gives PSQCA the same powers that the 16 March 2026 ECC process decision re-routed through the EDB.
The S&T ministry argues that the cumulative effect of these four items is to put automobile standards under the EDB and the Industries and Production ministry instead of under PSQCA.
What is still uncertain
The ECC deferred the agenda and asked for the climate change ministry’s existing committee to be consulted before any proposal is returned to it. The committee’s deliberations are not public, and the climate change ministry has not set out a position.
The S&T ministry has not specified which of the four items it is willing to negotiate on. The 24 September 2025 ECC decision is the umbrella decision; amending or withdrawing it would touch the September 2025 framework for the commercial import of used vehicles, a politically sensitive area in which the federal cabinet has already ratified outcomes. The SROs the ministry wants amended are specific clauses, not the entire notifications. The Tribune reported that the Industries and Production ministry informed the ECC that the overlapping functions had already been referred to a committee under the climate change minister, and the ECC used that to defer.
It is also unclear whether the 16 March 2026 ECC process decision on automobile pre-shipment inspection agency registration can be revisited before its next procedural step, since SRO 2443 dated 16 December 2025 already grants PSQCA the same registration authority. The S&T ministry’s framing is that the 16 March decision is redundant rather than contradictory.
The Motor Vehicles Industry Development Act 2025 is still under inter-ministerial review. The S&T ministry withdrew its earlier no-objection in April 2026, but the Industries and Production ministry has continued to pursue the draft. If the draft becomes law, it would create a separate statutory channel for automobile standards under the Industries and Production ministry, complicating the overlap the S&T ministry is asking the ECC to remove.
Sources & reporting notes
This is a synthesis of the 1 October 2026 ECC agenda and the underlying statutory record, not independent on-the-ground reporting. The cited pages were reviewed on 1 October 2026. The Express Tribune account by Zafar Bhutta is the single newspaper read-out of the ECC summary; the source framing is the request of Pakistan's Ministry of Science and Technology that the ECC revisit its earlier decision, as carried by the newspaper. The primary records — the PSQCA Act 1996, the Rules of Business 1973 and the four SROs and the one EDB notification the ministry wants amended — are listed below so that readers can trace each affected clause to its text.
- The Express Tribune — Overlap in auto environmental standards flagged1 October 2026 · Zafar Bhutta's read-out of the ECC summary, the four SROs the S&T ministry wants amended, the climate change ministry committee, and the deferred agenda.
- Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority — PSQCA Act and statutory mandatePermanent reference · The PSQCA Act 1996, the body's powers to formulate, adopt and notify standards and to register inspection bodies, and the placement of the authority under the Ministry of Science and Technology.
- Government of Pakistan — Rules of Business 1973Permanent reference · Serial 36 of Schedule-I, sub-rules 12, 30, 31 and 32, which the S&T ministry says assign the formulation of standards to the PSQCA.
