History
In 1964, the Government of Malaysia directed the Minister of Commerce and Industry to make a study of the establishment of a national standards organization. This is in response to the urgent necessity of adopting the principles of standardization in light of Malaysia's accelerating industrial development.
As a result, the Standards Institution of Malaysia (SIM) was initially established as a governmental department under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in early 1966. In October 1966, the Standards Act No. 76 was passed in Parliament making SIM the national standards body. SIM was governed by the Standards Council. The Standards Act provides the Standards Council with independent authority for the declaration of standards and the issuance of certification mark licenses.
In 1974, the National Action Council decided that SIM to be merged with the National Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research (NISIR) to form the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM). As a result of this decision, SIRIM was established as a statutory body under the SIRIM (Incorporation) Act 1975 by the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, and came into effect on 15 September 1975. With this merger, SIRIM is better equipped to expand its scope of operations in line with the rapid industrialization in Malaysia.
In view of rapidly changing market needs as a result of the accelerating national industrialization and globalization of markets, there was a need to amend the SIRIM (Incorporation) Act 1975. This will provide necessary flexibility for SIRIM to respond to these changes.
The amendments to the SIRIM (Incorporation) Act, approved by Parliament, came into effect on 24 July 1993.
The amendments allow SIRIM to undertake commercial operations through the formation of joint-venture or wholly owned subsidiaries. Under this amendment, the 24-member SIRIM Council was replaced by a 13-member SIRIM of which six were from the public sector and seven from the private sector. The new SIRIM Board structure enables greater accountability and efficiency, and further strengthen the linkages between SIRIM and the industry. On 1 September 1996, SIRIM was corporatized to be known as SIRIM Berhad. SIRIM Berhad was incorporated under the Companies Act, vested with all the rights, privileges and obligations of SIRIM.
