GENCON 2022
BIMCO's current Uniform General Charter, and what its comprehensive rewrite changed.
GENCON 2022 is the current edition of BIMCO’s Uniform General Charter, the flagship dry cargo voyage charter party first developed in 1922. It pairs with CONGENBILL 2022 and supersedes GENCON 1994, which remains in live use.
Unlike the 1994 revision, which set out to clarify rather than rewrite, GENCON 2022 is a deliberate comprehensive rewrite. BIMCO’s subcommittee, with Documentary Committee support, chose that course so a company without in-house legal support would find most relevant issues addressed in the printed form rather than having to build them from riders, and the clause count roughly doubled.
The full article will cover the clause structure, the unpacked laytime machinery across clauses 9 to 13, the incorporation of the Laytime Definitions 2013, the introduction of despatch at half the demurrage rate, the York-Antwerp Rules 2016 and BIMCO Law and Arbitration Clause 2020 provisions, and a clause by clause comparison against GENCON 1994.