The Role of Electronic Bill of Lading in Easiest Port Management

This paper deals with an urgent topic today – the challenges of implementing electronic bills of lading in international trade. Lots of advantages can be gained from introducing them, for example a better environment, lower prices of documentation and an easier contractual procedure. In the paper, the legal method is combined with interviews and enquiries with different interested parties in this line of business – banks, shipping companies and forwarding agents. The results show that the lack of success for the electronic bills of lading is attributable to the general resistance and a conservative view among the aforementioned parties and that the legislation often is either obsolete or that the provisions do not support the new technology in a way that is appropriate. It seems like the technical solutions develop faster than the legal ones. The work has predominantly been focused on a number of features that are compared between the electronic bill of lading and the paper-based bill of lading. These features are the written document, the signature, the original and negotiability. Especially the first three features are closely related. As to the signature, it can be done with digital signatures, but the problem is that it is not possible to guarantee that the document is handled confidentially, unless no appropriate cryptographic method has been elaborated. A development towards incorporating the rules governing electronic bills of lading and electronic letters of credit could increase the pace of the change towards a more common use of electronic transport documents.

کلیدواژه ها:

electronic ، Bill of Lading