New ICC website aids understanding of Incoterms 2000
Paris, 19
March 2001 - ICC today
opens a new website to assist traders to understand Incoterms, the standard
trade definitions most commonly used in international contracts.
Among the best known Incoterms
are EXW (Ex works), FOB (Free on Board), CIF (Cost,Insurance and Freight), DDU
(Delivered Duty Unpaid), and CPT (Carriage Paid To).
Click on www.incoterms.org
to learn about the areas that the 13 Incoterms cover, how each one works and
the answers to frequently asked questions. The new site reproduces the Preambles
in full in read-only format. These are concise descriptions that explain the
purpose of each term.
The Preambles do not spell
out the obligations of buyer and seller, which are essential to the correct
use of Incoterms. This information may be obtained by consulting the full published
texts of Incoterms, which may be ordered from ICC Publishing and ICC national
committees around the world.
Correct use of Incoterms
goes a long way to providing the legal certainty upon which mutual confidence
between business partners must be based. To be sure of using them correctly,
trade practitioners need to consult the official ICC texts and to beware of
the many unauthorized summaries and approximate versions that abound on the
web.
ICC introduced the first
version of Incoterms in 1936. Since then, ICC expert lawyers and trade practitioners
have updated them six times to keep pace with the development of international
trade. The current version, Incoterms 2000, came into force on 1 January 2000.
"Incoterms" is
an ICC trademark and the text of Incoterms in whole or in part is subject to
ICC's copyright. Related ICC publications, in printed or in electronic form,
are also subject to copyright. ICC copyright policy is described in full on
the new website.
As the guardian and originator
of Incoterms, ICC has a responsibility to consult all parties interested in
international trade regularly in order to keep Incoterms relevant, efficient
and up-to-date. This is a long and costly process for ICC, which is a non-governmental,
self-financed organ
ization. The work is financed out of sales of Incoterms 2000
and related publications.
Incoterms
2000 website