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Showing posts from May 16, 2017

Introduction to International Trade Documentation – Part 2

There are several broad categories of documents used in international trade. A category indicates either that the documents are issued by a particular group (i.e. a shipping or logistics company) or are required by a particular entity (i.e. a bank or custom authority). In many cases, documents issued by one entity (i.e. the bill of lading issued by a shipping or logistics company) may be required by more than one entity (i.e. the importer, the country of import customs authority, etc.). In other cases, a single entity may both issue documentation as well as require documentation from other entity (i.e. banks issue documents related to letters of credit, but may require a number of specific documents from both the importer and exporter). The following is a brief summary of the broad categories of international trade documentation. Transaction Documents Transaction documents are the documents the buyer and the seller generate to form the basis of their agreement to sell and purc