The Port Environment and the Forwarder’s Field of Operations
The legal environment of freight forwarding in Georgia is directly linked to the port system established by the Maritime Code. Under Article 70 of the Code, a seaport is a complex of port infrastructure located at a defined geographical place, which may contain one or more port facilities. The territory of a port facility covers the land territory allotted to it and its aquatorium the sea area allotted to it, and it is precisely the port facility that ensures the readiness of its territory and aquatorium for safe navigation.
On the territory and in the aquatorium of a port facility, incoming vessels are loaded and discharged, served, bunkered, technically serviced and repaired, and cargo transport-forwarding, storage, accumulation, packing and warehousing operations are carried out, together with the transshipment of cargo from one type of transport to another and other operations — this list describes exactly the field in which the forwarder operates. To receive port services, a maritime single window system functions in the ports of Georgia: the applicant enters the relevant information into the system only once, on the vessel’s entry into and exit from the port; the functioning of the system is ensured by the Agency, while every other competent body participates in it by coordinating its activities with the Agency. The list of ports of Georgia open to the ships of foreign countries is determined by the Government of Georgia and is published in the Notices to Mariners.
Obligations of Service Providers
Article 78 of the Code provides that in a port facility ship agency services, stevedoring services, survey services and transport-forwarding services are rendered in accordance with international standards and Georgian legislation. The companies providing these services are obliged, before starting the relevant activity, to submit to the Agency their registration data and contact information.
The ship agency is obliged, in the name of and on the instructions of the shipowner or charterer, to settle accounts for all types of services rendered and to present to the shipowner or charterer a unified disbursement account. The agency must further ensure the provision of data about the vessel to the maritime single window system and is responsible for the accuracy of those data and for updating them whenever the information changes. For a forwarder this means that the chain of services in the port must be covered by documentation in both directions — at the level of registration, of accounting, and of the accuracy of data — and that any deficiency here may grow into legal liability.
The Contract of Carriage by Sea and the International Rules
Under Article 114 of the Code, a contract of carriage of goods by sea is a written contract under which the carrier or the shipowner undertakes to carry the goods and deliver them to the receiver, while the sender or the charterer undertakes to pay the cost of carriage — the freight. Charterer and shipowner are the persons who conclude a written contract for the charter of a ship — a charter party. At the international level, Georgia applies the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law relating to Bills of Lading of 1924 (the Hague-Visby Rules) and the United Nations Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea of 1978 (the Hamburg Rules).
Article 118 extends this system to the parties of a dispute: the legal relations between the carrier of the goods and the receiver are determined by the bill of lading or the sea waybill. The conditions of the contract of carriage by sea formulated in the bill of lading or the sea waybill must be performed by the receiver, where the bill of lading or the sea waybill refers to the contract of carriage in which those conditions are formulated. The practical conclusion for the forwarder is this: neglecting the text of the bill of lading or the waybill will later cost his client or the forwarder himself, because it is precisely these documents that determine his obligations and his rights of claim.