Chamberized Commercial Invoice
Dear All,
Lc calls for:
"A beneficiary certificate certify that all non-negotiable documents sent to applicant within 5 working days after shipment."
"Commercial invoice in one original and two copies, original will be legalized by Chamber of Commerce"
Presented documents:
Shipment date: 18.01.2010
Date of beneficiary certificate:22.01.2010
Date of commercial invoice: 22.01.2010
Lagalization date of commercial inovice by Chamber of Commerce: 25.01.2010
Confirming bank dishonours due to date discrepancy:
"Legalization date of C/I is late than 5 days after shipment."
Thanks for sharing your ideas...
Regards
Erdem
What is the original date of Invoice, not the legalisation date.
Dear Erdem
Documents are not discrepant, as document dated within time period stated in the credit., hope saturday and sunday is a non working day.
But technically, docs should not be dated 5 days after shipment, coz how can you issue a cert when you have already sent the docs to applicant.
Regards!!!!
Mujeeb :-)
The discrepancy has not been properly worded, i.e does not clearly indicate the discrepancy, and thus, could be considered deficient under Art. 16. of UCP600. The presumed discrepancy is to do with the beneficiary certificate, and not necessarily the date of the legalisation on the invoice. Therefore, the discrepancy should have been worded along the following lines: "Whilst the beneficiary's certificate is dated 22.1.10, and evidences that non-negotiable documents have been sent to the applicant within 5 working days after shipment of 18.1.10, legalisation of the commercial invoice is dated 25.1.10.
It's worth mentioning however, that it could be legitimately argued that the meaning of "non-negotiable" documents is vague, and could be referring to simply non-negotiable copies of B/Ls and not necessarily, copies of all documents. Therefore, the date of the legalisation is irrelevant, as this is not a "non-negotiable" document, for the purpose of determining compliance with the period, and may not have been a required document to be despatched to the applicant.
The fact that the certificate is dated earlier than the legalisation date, does not automatically infer that the depatch of documents has been effected on 22.1.10 and not later, i.e on 25.1.10.
In any case, subject to there being no local banking holidays between 18.1.10 and 25.1.10, and assuming that Saturday and Sunday are non-banking days in the negotiating bank's country, the gap between the above dates is within "5 working days after shipment" (the word "after" excludes the date mentioned), and would thus comply, in any case.
Erdem Kavurmaci
Abrar,
You are great, discrepancy advice wording is same with yours. :) i relayed to you wrong.
Thanks all of you for replies.
In conclusion; we proceeded without discrepancy.
However i am still not clear about date problems. If a document indicates both issuing date and legalization date which one is correct for calculation.
Regards & thanks again.
Erdem
My view is that this depends on what is being required to be determined.
The issuing bank believes that the 25.1.10 is outside the 5 day period after shipment and is thus arguing that the certificate is misrepresenting fact, i.e as the legalisation date is 25.1.10, the documents could not have been sent within the 5 days. Playing devil's advocate, even if the legalisation has taken place later than the 5 days after shipment, the content of the certification complies, and it may be difficult to pursue this as a valid discrepancy. The beneficiary may well argue that there is no connection between the date of the certificate and the date the documents were actually despatched. A similar issue was discussed on the forum, under which contrasting views were offered:
http://letterofcreditforum.com/content/clarification
There are no governing UCP provisions which covers your specific scenario. The only reference to dates in the UCP is contained within Art. 14 (i) which states : "A document may be dated prior to the issuance date of the credit, but must not be dated later than the date of presentation". However, para 15 of ISBP states " A document indicating a date of preparation and a later date of signing is deemed to be issued on the date of signing". So, one could argue that the "date of preparation" is the date of the invoice, whereas, the "date of signing" is the legalisation date.
Whether the argument would be accepted, is another matter.
Not an expert here.. so only in the hope of learning, my idea is like this..
the discrepancy and rejection based on "Legalization date of C/I is late than 5 days after shipment." is invalid, as lc asked for original to be legalized only. and there was no time restriction as to when the original must be legalized.
Having a print/stamp/chop of legalization on A COPY of the original invoice was not a requirement, but rather the sending of the Non-Negotiable docs within 5 days was important to applicant.
confirming bank's checker has assumed that since legalization was not done within 5 days of shipment on the original invoice (based on the original invoice they have/had on hands) so bene could not possibly have sent the copies of the original invoice with legalization stamp. yes. that could or might be true.
But my question is, under UCP rules.... is it confirming / negotiating / issuing bank's reponsibility to make sure that the applicant gets/have gotten, the exact same copies of all the original documents as the docs that are/were presented to confirming bank? If yes, then issuing bank should have completely listed all the requirements for non-negotiable docs as well.
just my thoughts. Awaiting to read from experts. thanks.
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