Adoption of UN Convention on sale of goods to benefit Bangladesh

Bangladesh will greatly benefit from adopting the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) as it provides a uniform regime for out of court dispute settlement for the international sale of goods.

Mahbubur Rahman, board chairman of Bangladesh International Arbitration Centre (BIAC) and president of International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh, said this while speaking at a webinar on "Alternative Dispute Resolution and International Sale of Goods: Time to Benefit from CISG".

The BIAC and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) - Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RCAP) jointly organised the event on Thursday.

Addressing the programme, Kaiser A Chowdhury, chief executive officer of BIAC said hosting such a webinar should lead us to take the initiative to establish an efficient framework for dispute resolution and work to ensure that the government considers this Convention to improve supply chain management efficiency and boost the usage of alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

Athita Komindr, head of UNCITRAL RCAP, provided an overview of her organisation's mandate on furthering the progressive harmonisation and modernisation of international trade and commercial law and how the UNCITRAL RCAP promotes the mandate to public and private stakeholders in the approximately 60 jurisdictions that it serves.

Luca Castellani, legal officer of UNCITRAL RCAP, discussed the basic features of the CISG, stressing its flexibility and ability to adjust to supervening circumstances. Noting the economic importance of the export of manufactured goods, he invited Bangladesh to consider the adoption of the Convention to increase governance and legal predictability in cross-border supply chains and to reduce transaction costs.

Sherlin Tung, partner of Withersworldwide in Hong Kong, discussed the benefits of the CISG for commercial parties involved in international commercial transactions and gave insight on the situation of implementation of the CISG in Hong Kong.