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Anatomy
of UCP 600
MORPHOLOGY OF TRANSPORT DOCUMENTS ARTICLES
By Kim Christensen
Trade Finance Specialist,
Nordea, Denmark
[LC VIEWS Newsletter
N0.87; January 2007]
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Editor’ Note: After the recent metamorphosis
(revision) of UCP Kim Christensen dissects the new UCP to see what changes
have occurred in the transport documents articles. He finds some changes are
material or technical, but not revolutionary.
Most of the changes are linguistic in nature – that is, rewording. On the
whole, the transport documents articles in the new UCP are:
Old wine in new bottle.
Ravi Mehta,
Ph.D.
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UCP 600 at Kim’s
Dissection Table
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| The
revision is not revolution |
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I think
it is surely not the big revolutionary changes you meet when comparing the
transport articles in UCP 600 with the transport articles in UCP 500. There
are, however, “real” changes – some of course more “material” than others:
Multimodal transport
document – name change, position change –why?
The first change seems like a coincidence, but a
great deal of thought lies behind that. The multimodal transport document,
which in UCP 600 is called “Transport Document Covering At Least Two Modes
of Transport”, has been moved from 4th place, in the list of transport
documents articles in UCP 500 to, 1st in such list in UCP 600. So it is now
the multimodal transport article that you will meet first in new UCP. The
background is that the UCP wants to reflect that such transport document is
now mostly used in the industry and therefore deserves priority in
attention. (I have not seen any statistics to support this view).
Marine/ Ocean bill of
lading - UCP 600 calls “Bill of Lading” – what’s in a name?
A basic requirement for the Bill of Lading is that
goods must be “Shipped on board”. The UCP 500 covered a number of ways of
doing this – that would probably confuse more than clarify. Some of these
have been removed in the UCP 600. For example, the following requirement
from UCP 500 article 23(a) (ii) is now gone:
If the bill of lading indicates a place of
receipt or taking in charge different from the port of loading, the on board
notation must also include the port of loading stipulated in the Credit and
the name of the vessel on which the goods have been loaded, even if they
have been loaded on the vessel named in the bill of lading. This provision
also applies whenever loading on board the vessel is indicated by
pre-printed wording on the bill of lading.
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What’s ”shipped on board”?
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So I guess (hope)
that in the future we will not discuss whether “Hong Kong CY” is the same
place as “Hong Kong” (see ISBP paragraph 82).
Charter Party Bill of
Lading – an example of transport industry’s influence
It is now acceptable that a “Charterer” (or a named
agent on behalf of the charterer) can sign the document. I am not sure how
widely this option will be used (I see only few charter party bills of
lading) – but in any case it has been added at the request of the industry.
At the same time if an agent signs on behalf of a
“Master” then the name of the master need not appear
from the document. Again this is a change dictated by the transport
industry.
Air transport
document: determining date of shipment –UCP 600 makes it easy
In past.
In the UCP 500 there was a rather odd rule regarding how to determine “date
of shipment”:
Where the Credit calls for an actual date of
dispatch, indicates a specific notation of such date, the date of dispatch
so indicated on the air transport document will be deemed to be the date of
shipment. In all other cases, the date of issuance of the air transport
document will be deemed to be the date of shipment.
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What’s the date of shipment?.
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At present. This has been changed
in UCP 600 to the following:
Indicate the date of issuance. This date will be
deemed to be the date of shipment unless the air transport document contains
a specific notation of the actual date of shipment, in which case the date
stated in the notation will be deemed to be the date of shipment.
This will be much easier for exporters to
understand, and the LC banker need not raise illogical discrepancies based
on this.
Road, Rail or Inland
Waterway Transport Documents
UCP 600 makes changes in the rule perhaps to please
the transport industry. For illustration, UCP 600 article 24(a) (i)) reads:
If a rail transport document does not identify
the carrier, any signature or stamp of the railway company will be accepted
as evidence of the document being signed by the carrier.
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If a rail transport document does not
idetify the carrier....
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Clean
transport documents
In UCP 600 article 27), a change / new provision is
as follows
The word “clean” need not appear on a transport
document, even if a credit has a requirement for transport document to be
“clean on board”.
Conclusion
The changes in the UCP 600 are for two purposes: 1)
to facilitate understanding of UCP; and 2) to facilitate documentation by
transport industry.
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