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| December 5, 2005 | Monday | Ziqa’ad 2, 1426 |
Ordinance on arbitralian awards issued
ISLAMABAD, Dec 4: President Gen Pervez Musharraf has promulgated an ordinance, effective from November 11, 2005, “to provide for the recognition and enforcement of arbitration agreements and foreign arbitral awards”.
Pakistan is a signatory to the 1958 United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards and the ordinance has been issued to fulfil the obligations under it.
An announcement by the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights late Saturday night said that after the promulgation of the Ordinance No. XX of 2005, the Arbitration (Protocol and Convention) Act 1937 stood repealed.
The new ordinance shall apply to “arbitration agreements” made before, on or after July 14, 2005 on which the Recognition and Enforcement (Arbitration Agreements and Foreign Arbitral Awards) Ordinance-VIII of 2005 came into force.
But it shall not apply to “foreign arbitral awards” made before July 14, 2005.
Though the ordinance was issued on the eve of a National Assembly session and has been given effect from Nov 11, 2005, Prime Minister Shaukat had stated on Nov 15 at a conference on ‘privatization of justice’ in Islamabad that “I will direct the Law Ministry to amend the Arbitration Act and introduce a new law in the parliament” to set up an arbitration centre to be run by private enterprizes.
The objective of the arbitration centre was stated to be to resolve disputes through mediation, and failing mediation through arbitration.
The settlement was meant to be reached without interference or right of approach to any court of law while its award would be strictly enforceable with just one appeal to the Supreme Court that too on limited grounds.
Arbitration has certain advantages over litigation, like confidentiality, speed, flexibility and ability of the parties to choose arbitrators, the prime minister had explained on the occasion.
“We recognize that our adversarial litigation environment has not allowed the courts to pace up with changing time and speed of the business world in settling commercial disputes,” he had observed.
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