Harmonization of International Sales Law: CISG as Supplement to Indonesian Contract Law

Abstract

The development of the market has promoted free and flexible traffic of goods to enter and leave any countries in the world. Automatically, parties are in need to a simpler, safer and more agreeable way of making a deal especially on the issue of applicable law. In their contract, parties would prefer to choose applicable law that is harmonized and widely recognized rather than spending time to negotiate on applying national law of their own. Convention on Contract for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) is one uniform codification established to waive the long-standing problem of choice of law. Seeing that Indonesia has not become one of them, resolving dispute involving Indonesian party will uphold provisions inherited from Dutch (KUHPer). This is a problem of law among parties that has been ratifying the CISG, since it would raise the notion “which law would prevail to resolve a dispute?”. This article aims to encourage Indonesian parties of international sales contract to consider CISG as the choice of law. This is because CISG can supplement inadequacies of Book III KUHPer in some issues such as; formation of contract, obligation of parties and remedies.