Bahrain played a key role in agreeing the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) banking commission's new Uniform Rules for Demand Guarantees (URDG 758).

The new rules, first in 18 years, have also been adopted and endorsed by the ICC Commission on Commercial Law and Practice and the ICC executive board.

The revised rules will apply to demand guarantees worth hundreds of billions of dollars securing monetary and performance obligations in a wide array of international and domestic contracts world over and will come into force on July 1, next year.

ICC Bahrain contributed significantly to the drafting of the new rules through ICC Bahrain board member and chairman of ICC Bahrain Trade Finance Forum Pradeep Taneja, who was selected by the ICC as a member of the URDG Drafting Group.

'Bahrain has become the first country in GCC to participate in an international rule writing exercise initiated by the ICC,' said ICC National Committee in Bahrain chairman Ebrahim Zainal.

'The other countries which had their representatives on the drafting group came from US, UK, France, Germany, Austria and Iran,' he added.

'The unanimous vote for the new URDG 758 by a widely divergent group of countries across continents is a testament to the success of acceptance of ICC rules representing a most powerful effort to harmonise the international demand guarantee practice on a global level,' said Taneja who is also BBK head of trade finance in transactional banking.

'The new rules are perfectly aligned to GCC/Middle Eastern practices relating to Demand Guarantees,' he added.-TradeArabia News Service