Regulatory Impact Analysis

Regulatory Impact Analysis is one of several components of the system which supports rational decisions on the justification of regulations, help formulate regulations, examines the costs and benefits of changed or the new regulations, and improve the regulatory system. RIA provides empirical data which clarifies available options for decision-making process. The requirement to prepare RIA was introduced for the first time in the US in the early 1970s, by the administration of President R.M. Nixon.

Regulations are the most important instrument of effectiveness and efficiency of the regulatory management. RIA is used to define the issues and to determine the appropriate direction of the government actions. Australia and New Zealand, the members

The first is Preliminary Impact and Risk Assessment (PIRA) which is the basic plan for the RIA that should be completed before proposing recommendations to the Cabinet. PIRA is a document which is intended for agencies to determine whether RIA requirements for which they are responsible apply to a policy initiative, to identify estimated risks and impacts of regulatory options for policy initiative that could be appropriately addressed in RIA, help Treasury policy determine the level of policy engagement. There are the key elements of good RIA which should be the basis for the Cabinet policy development to which RIA requirements apply: describing the status quo, defining the problem and assessing its magnitude, defining the objectives, identification of full range of feasible options, analysis of options, consultation, conclusions and recommendations, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and review. The guidance is quite detailed because RIA deals with different policy problems and that’s why the approach “one-size-fits-all” does not work in this case. These elements should be summarized in the RIS, the second stage of RIA

The RIS provides the overall analysis of appropriate options to address the health problems resulted by the tobacco products. Smoking is the biggest cause of preventable death and disease in New Zealand, with approximately 5000 deaths each year from smoking or exposure to second-hand smoking. The specific policy objective of this RIS is to prevent tobacco promotion in order to decrease the attractiveness of smoking, especially for young people, increase the effectiveness of health warning messages and improve population