(19 February 2021 – Singapore) Singapore has become the second country to adopt the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) into domestic legislation, after Bahrain.
This grants electronic trade documents such as Promissory Notes, Electronic Bills of Lading (eBLs) and Bills of Exchange the same legal standing as their paper-based counterparts.
Prior to this, companies involved in trade relied on contract law when using digital instruments such as the eBL, which meant that all parties involved in a transaction had to be onboarded onto a single platform.
“The technology needs to contain the same information as the offline document – like the bill of lading – and importantly, there needs to be a reliable method to identify the immutability, the integrity and the originality of the record” stated Pinsent Masons Partner, Bryan Tan.
“This is extremely helpful. It gives more confidence to typically smaller organisations who might be a little bit reticent to participate. The larger organisations are relatively confident and comfortable in moving forward with digitalisation anyway, but it paves the way for mass market acceptance” said Bolero International Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Paul Mallon.