Best Trade Solution

Dear all,
If a Letter of Credit requires : CMR .... evidencing date of dispatch... do you understand that the date stated in box no. 4 of CMR (Date and place of taking in charge) would meet the credit requirements or the CMR should clearly evidence the wording : 'Date of dispatch: DD.MM.YYYY'.
Thanks for your upcoming comments. Appreciate if you have any ICC opinion in hand in this respect.

On the face of it, if the LC clearly has asked for “CMR .... evidencing date of dispatch”, one would expect a clear indication of date of dispatch and a date of taking in charge will not suffice.

On the other hand, I don’t think that the road transport industry makes a distinction between taking in charge and date of dispatch.

UCP 600, article 24 also talks only of difference between the issue date and the taking in charge date.

While this is an interesting question, unfortunately, I don’t have an answer. Sorry! (But I thought I’d leave a comment indicating the two opposing views anyway! )

Thanks for your quick response. I'm really stuck between these 2 definitions notwithstanding my first though is that the both terms relate to an action performed by shipper and translated into carrier action (i.e when the goods is taken over by carrier, the shipper dispatched the goods.
On the other hand I will try to analize later on your first statement about 'expectation' of being mentioned the 'dispatch' wording. At the moment , I'm still in doubt with it as it may well be considered art. 14d of UCP 600: .. need not be identical to, but must not conflict with..... I think the magic word here is equivalency of these 2 words in terms of UCP or real differences (if any).
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I cannot see what is in issuing bank's mind when uses such terms and whether or not they shaped them to a commercial form. A banker must abide to the rules of establishing compliance (UCP, ISBP and to some extent INCOTERMS). Such Publications draw no distinctions between the 2 terms.

Hi Pals,

may help ICC Opinion 657 rev, discrepancy two, to solve the problem. Date in box 4 is the date of dispatch. In surface and air transport a notation of actual despatch is a simple hypocrisy.

Other comments appreciated

Ciao

Please help me to locate within the quoted opinion that box 4 is actually date of dispatch as I have read three times that opinion and no info in this respect have found.
Thanks

Hi Pals,

also the commentary ICC 601, states referring to art 24:
The date of issuance (of transport document, i.e CMR,) will be deemed to be the date of shipment(CMR box 21) unless, in the case of this article, there is a dated reception stamp, date of receipt or date of shipment appearing on the transport document(box 4).

This is naturally my personal opinion.

Ciao