The ASEAN Alliance of Health Supplement Associations (AAHSA) and the International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA) have jointly issued a Traditional Medicines and Health Supplements Scorecard (TMHS), which is the first of its kind developed by an industry in the region. The scorecard provides a strategic assessment of the ongoing standards harmonization in the sector with special focus on health supplements.

The scorecard comes in response to requests from the ASEAN heads of government and ASEAN economic ministers for the respective industries to provide their active feedback and perspectives on the integration and harmonization of their sector in ASEAN as part of the building of the Single Market under the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015.

The results have affirmed the significant progress ASEAN has achieved in harmonization with nine of the 14 standards and technical requirements being completed since 2004 in the areas of labeling, composition, quality, safety and product placement.

The scorecard also showed the TMHS harmonization is reaching the goal of building the ASEAN Single Market in this sector as most of the measures identified for harmonization have met the 50% threshold for completion with a few remaining to be completed by the end of 2015. The majority of the companies involved in the health supplements industry, including the small and medium enterprises will eventually be able to achieve the harmonized standards and technical requirements.

The scorecard indicated that ASEAN would need to work swiftly to complete the remaining measures. A number of measures remain in progress or on hold due to the lack of consensus on how to tackle them. The health supplement sector feels strongly that any exceptions from the ASEAN requirements, such as on labeling, will impede the free flow of health supplement products across the region, and believes ways should be found to remove these exceptions.

The scorecard has been disseminated to the ASEAN economic ministers and the senior officials of ASEAN as well as the ASEAN secretary-general for their further actions. The second scorecard will be issued by the end of 2014.