A study on the regulations of delivery methods in sea and inland waterway transport in international trade for incoterms® 2010

International trade is an essential tool in order to achieve an economical balance all around the world. As a result of an increasing trend in the international trade, rules that are applied to this trade have started to become a problem. Hence, parties that are involved to this trading have tried to reshape these rules by using several agreements. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has designed and published Incoterms® in order to provide unity and standardization in the agreements between the parties, to facilitate international trade and to solve problems that might arise. Incoterms®, which was first published in 1923 and then, in 1928, has been modified eight times until today. At the present time, Incoterms® 2010 is the most up to date version that is used by parties. On the other hand, a huge part of the earth surrounded by oceans and seas that form waterways between many countries. Consequently, these geographical formations provides many advantages in trade such as low cost per unit rate, eliminating border crossing issues, and allowing to transport goods in high amounts. Therefore, the seaway transport is the most preferred option for trades between countries. In the world trade, the rate of using seaways transport is approximately 84%, whereas, in Turkey, the seeway transport is 62.83% of the total export rate. Eventually, delivery terms play an important role both in the world's, and the Turkey's international trade. In this frame, the main aim of this thesis is explaining Incoterms® and updates which, have been provided by Incoterms® 2010. The subtitles of the thesis are listed as following; rules for sea and inland waterway transport in Incoterms® 2010, how they differ from Incoterms® 2000, points that have been uptaded up to now, determining to which problems have been solved and which advantages have been provided by these updates. In the first part of this study, the concepts of foreign trade and logistics, and the terminology used in the Incoterms® rules that they try to regulate are listed. Besides, this section provides information about how international trade rules are standardized, and about the vision and missions the International Chamber of Commerce. In the second part of the study; the history, purpose, content, classification and applications of Incoterms® rules are mentioned. This chapter also examines the kinds of Incoterms® terms, obligations of these terms that are imposed on the buyer and seller, and updates on Incoterms® 2010. In the third part, the delivery methods used in sea and inland waterway transportation are studied in detail within the frame of Incoterms® 2010. A comparison between Incoterms® 2000 and Incoterms® 2010 in terms of delivery modes of sea and inland waterway transport is performed as well. In the fourth part, as another subtitle of this thesis, experts' opinions has been taken into account in order to analyse the updates on the Incoterms® 2010 rules. Finally, in the conclusion part, some proposals for the possible future updates on the Incoterms® are provided by making a general overview.