According to Gulf Technical Regulation for Low Voltage Electrical Equipment and Appliance BD-142004-01, the new GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) scheme will be in force from 2016-07-01, for the Gulf areas including United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Bahrain, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sultanate of Oman, State of Qatar, State of Kuwait and Republic of Yemen.

GCC scheme is already implemented for toys and now under improvement for electrical equipment. We can see the trends as below:

1. Electrical equipment made available on the market shall bear the Gulf Conformity Marking (GSO mark):
2.  Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) will be considered
3. It will determine two lists for two categories of electrical equipment depending on their degree of hazard to persons, property and environment (under working) and it will run different Conformity Assessment Procedures.
4. Declaration of Conformity from manufacturer & importer shall be kept for a period of 10 years after the electrical equipment has been placed on the market.
5. Test reports can be from in-house test laboratories (ILAC/IAF) or CB scheme.

The details are not clear now but the current systems (like CoC in Saudi Arabia, TER + TIR in Kuwait, ECAS in UAE, etc.) will probably keep running as before. DEKRA would like to kindly remind manufacturers and exporters keeping an eye on the regulation movement.