ANSA, the sole standards body in Afghanistan, has been making efforts to tackle the technical challenges that the Afghan private sector is facing regarding lack of competitiveness, inaccessibility to more lucrative global markets, and the challenges of the infant manufacturing industry being able to compete with the flood of imported commodities. The absence of standards for many products is a huge negative influence in all of these areas.

Since 2001, reconstruction of infrastructure has been a priority for the international community and deemed as the main responsibility of the government of Afghanistan. Sustained economic growth is considered a pillar of success for the Afghan Government, which envisages trade facilitation and economic reconstruction including the rules, and institutions that enable the development of a market economy through diversified domestic production, effective import substitutions and gradual export promotion.

The government of Afghanistan has fully supported the establishment and development of the standards body in the country. Presidential Decree 952 in 2004 on the establishment of ANSA under the Ministry of Commerce and Industries was the cornerstone for the establishment of a standards body.