ISLAMABAD: Secretary , Board of Investment (BOI), Azher Ali Choudhary, supported World Trade Organization (WTO) system which would be a better option for international dispute settlement by expanding the scope of WTO to include investment disputes through the negotiations process.
He was participating an expert meeting of Establishment of a Multilateral Investment Dispute Settlement Mechanism which was held on 13-14 December, 2016 at World Trade Organization Centre, Geneva, said a statement issued by Board of Investment on Thursday.
The purpose of the meeting was to provide the opportunity for experts from governments to engage in a technical discussion of concrete elements related to the creation of a multilateral system for the resolution of investment disputes.
Azher Ali Choudhary, said that Pakistan was the pioneer of Bilateral Investment Treaties and the first ever BIT was between Pakistan and Germany; currently Pakistan had 48 BITs besides investment chapters in FTA's/ PTA's that were either operative or in the process of negotiations.
He informed that Pakistan, for the moment, was reviewing the template of BITs and one of the primary point under review was the dispute settlement.
"We are rather apprehensive of settlement through ad hoc tribunals and are giving a serious thought to an alternative to that and we tend to subscribe to the idea of a multilateral dispute settlement system", he said adding though "we are not totally averse to improving the current system but the predominant view is that it has now limited scope for that and it could be more practical to replace it".
He said till now we look at two models for international dispute settlement including International Court of Justice and WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism.
As far as (International Court of Justice) ICJ process is concerned, he said that might not be appropriate due to its particular nature that is more of a judicial process and procedures.
Azher said that Pakistan was a developing country and under a multilateral dispute settlement a support might be made available to access and to use the system.
This is one of the suggestions in the paper for discussion tabled by EU and Canada that is before us today, he aded.
He said a system similar to the current Advisory Centre for WTO Law or ACWL was a system that seems very advisable and have been great support to developing and LDC members.
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