EXPORT PROCEDURES AND DOCUMENTATION

DISCUSSION POINTS FOR EXPORTERS

To enter a foreign market successfully, your company may have to modify its product to conform to government regulations, geographic and climatic conditions, buyer preferences or standards of living. Your company may also need to modify its product to facilitate shipment or compensate for possible differences in engineering and design standards. Foreign government product regulations are common in international trade and are expected to expand in the future. 

Additionally, buyer preferences in a foreign market, such as religious practices or the use of leisure time, may also lead you to modify your product. Finally, market potential must be great enough to justify the direct and indirect costs involved in product adaptation. Your company should assess the costs to be incurred and, though it may be difficult, should determine the increased revenues expected from adaptation.

The decision to adapt a product is based partly on the degree of commitment to the specific foreign market; a company with short-term goals will probably have a different perspective than a company with long-term goals. 

Certificate of Origin: A certificate of origin is a document that declares the country where a good in a particular international shipment originated—i.e., where a manufacturing process last substantially transformed the good. Even though the commercial invoice usually includes a statement of origin, some countries require that a separate certificate of origin be completed. Customs offices will use this document to determine which duty rate to assess on the products being imported.

Exporters should seriously consider having the freight forwarder handle the formidable amount of documentation that exporting requires; freight forwarders are specialists in this process. The following documents are commonly used in exporting; which of them are actually used in each case depends on the requirements of both our government and the government of the importing country.

1. Commercial invoice
2. Bill of lading
3. Consular invoice
4. Certificate of origin
5. Inspection certification
6. Dock receipt and warehouse receipt
7. Destination control statement
8. Insurance certificate
9. Export license
10. Export packing list