No UCP
500 revision before 2003
Paris, 20
January 2000 - In
an article in the ICC newsletter Documentary Credits Insight, Gary Collyer,
the ICC Banking Commission's Technical Adviser, made it official: no revision
of UCP 500, the ICC's rules on documentary credits, for several years.
"We need to be able to
assess the development of e-commerce and to analyze its potential short - and
long-term implications for trade," Collyer says in the article. Collyer also
suggests that in the meantime the Banking Commission "needs to establish a mechanism
to supplement the issuance of a new set of rules" so that any revision is accompanied
by a commentary to help users interpret the rules uniformly. Collyer's article
was written to silence speculation, current in the media, that a new UCP revision
was under way.
In the meantime the Commission,
at its next meeting in May, will explore whether to develop interpretation papers
on two subjects - how UCP 500 should be used in electronic trade and how the
term "international standard banking practice" applies to specific UCP 500 articles.
"I believe we have obligation to provide better explanations of why a document
is right or wrong," Collyer says in his article.
Collyer's article is only
one of several key articles in the Winter 2000 issue of Documentary Credits
Insight, due out end January. Other stories include:
- A look at Chinese letter of credit practice by Shan Jian Bao, the new Asian
Vice Chair of the Banking Commission;
- The latest on ICC rules for electronic trade;
- The full text of controversial Banking Commission Opinions issued at its recent
Hong Kong meeting;
- How banks are responding to the new Incoterms; and
- An analysis of recent court cases dealling with letters of credit.
To order Documentary Credits
Insight, now in its sixth successful year of publication, simply go to the ICC
bookstore at www.iccbooks.com,
enter the name of your country, then click on the Documentary Credits Insight
icon on the left side of the page.
Commission on Banking Technique and Practice