Sri Lanka’s cabinet of ministers has approved a proposal to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (New York, 2005).

The Electronic Communications Convention entered in force on 1 March 2013 and aims at facilitating the use of electronic communications in international trade by assuring that contracts concluded and other communications exchanged electronically are as valid and enforceable as their traditional paper-based equivalents.

Sri Lanka will become the seventh ratifying State and the second in the Asia Pacific Region, following the ratification by Singapore in 2010. China, Philippines, Republic of Korea and Saudi Arabia are the other Asia Pacific signatories to the Convention, but are yet to ratify it.

For more information about the “e-CC”: http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/uncitral_texts/electronic_commerce/2005Convention.html