What Is a Waiver? Shipping Document for African Ports

In sea freight to West and Central Africa, a waiver is the common name for an electronic advance notice of the cargo, internationally usually called a cargo tracking note or ECTN. Literally, a waiver is a renunciation, but nothing is waived here: it is a cargo declaration that authorities in several African countries require for shipments to their ports, and in some cases for exports. It is usually applied for per shipment, checked by a national body and given a number under which customs and the port can identify the shipment.

How the procedure works

Each country sets its own details, but the steps are similar:

• Application: the shipper, or a forwarder or agent working for it, files the notice online, mostly with data from the bill of lading and the commercial invoice.
• Validation: a national body of the destination country, often a shippers' council, checks the data and validates the document against a fee.
• Number: the validated document has its own number, and the body passes its data on to customs and the port.
• Deadline: each country decides by when the validation must be in place, for example in relation to the vessel's arrival.

Because the data come from the bill of lading, the waiver depends on the shipping details. If the container, the weight or the consignee changes, the notice has to be corrected as well.

Costs and who pays them

The validating body charges a fee per document, and an agent's fee or a late penalty may come on top. Who bears these costs is for seller and buyer to agree. The agreed delivery term decides who handles export and import formalities, but whether the cargo tracking note counts as one of them is best written into the contract rather than left to the clause. How the eleven delivery terms split duties and costs is shown in the overview of Incoterms 2020 and who pays what.

Names and examples from individual countries

The same principle goes by many names: ECTN or CTN in English, BESC (Bordereau Electronique de Suivi des Cargaisons) or BSC (Bordereau de Suivi des Cargaisons) in French-speaking countries. Two examples, confirmed by the bodies in charge:

• Cameroon: the Conseil National des Chargeurs du Cameroun (CNCC) validates the BESC for imports and exports, by sea and for certain air and land transports. An import BESC submitted at least two days before the vessel arrives is validated and can be printed at once; a late one is validated only after the penalty has been paid.
• DR Congo: the Office de Gestion du Fret Multimodal (OGEFREM) has introduced the FERI for imports and the FERE for exports, which trace cargo from the port of loading to its destination.

Which other countries require what changes often, so the reliable source is the current information of the body in the destination country. For the trucking company that brings the container to the European port of loading, the waiver is not its own task, but container number, seal number and weight from the pre-carriage go into the bill of lading and from there into the notice, so they have to be right.