Mind the gap!  When were the goods exported?

Containerised shipments now dominate the cross-border movement of goods. A large proportion of these involve a sea voyage, and many will be multi-modal, the goods being collected by road from the seller and delivered by road to the buyer

The Incoterms rules are clear on defining the point of taking in charge by the carrier, which will be either at the container terminal or some inland point

But there is no direct reference to another potentially important piece of information – the date and place of export of the goods.

Why might this matter?  The issue arises with customs procedures and calculation of duty during import clearance.

Customs procedures vary, but typically the authorities use either the “CIF value” or the “FOB value”.   (These expressions bear no relation to the respective Incoterms definitions!)

In some cases the authorities will use the date of import of the goods, but in other cases they will use the date of export, and this is where the problem may arise.  This date matters, because it is used to fix the exchange rate into the local currency.

So where might the date of export be found?   The bill of lading may help, but this may only show a “received” date and not the “on-board date”, which indicates that the vessel is about to leave

For a multimodal transport document such as a Combined Transport Bill of Lading or a FIATA FBL, there will be fields for date of taking in charge and date of shipment, but the actual date of shipment cannot be known with certainty when the document is issued.

The most reliable source of information will usually be found in the electronic customs system used for the clearing of goods for export.

In the U.S. this will be reported in the EEI filing in the Automated Export System (AES).
For the U.K. it will be in the Customs Declaration Service (CDS)

These systems may reference the ship’s manifest, which details all its cargo

Other concerns around the date of export:

• It may be required in a certificate of origin
• Letters of credit typically call for an on-board bill of lading; it is of little comfort to the buyer or the bank to know that the goods have been taken in charge at some place which may be many miles away from the container terminal