Hafeez underlines need for simplifying legal system
By Asad Cheema

ISLAMABAD—Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh Federal Minister for Privatisation and Investment has said there is a need to simplify the existing legal system and explore alternate ways for resolving disputes.
He stated this in his opening address here Tuesday at the conference on arbitration under the title ‘Privatisation of Justice’ organized by Mandivalla & Zafar Law from the forum of SAARC Law, which is the prime organisation representing legal community, judges and jurists from all the SAARC nations.
Dr. Hafeez Shaikh said that a private justice system assigned the State a role of just another commercial partner, ensuring that non-commercial issues would not be aired. Pakistan has recently promulgated an ordinance ratifying the New York Convention on the recognition and enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Award, he said.
He stated that our current judicial system does not fully cater to settle commercial disputes, which was required to be resolved through specialized procedures and by experts with a different mindset. The government was supportive of the investors’ access third-party arbitration to settle investment disputes, such as the facilities of the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, he added.
He further stated that just and speedy resolution of disputes was now of essence in the commercial market and Pakistan has begun to accept as binding the international arbitration of investment disputes in some its privatisation major processes, which has brought further credibility to the privatisation program of Pakistan and boosted the process itself.
The Minister said that there was growth in private capital inflows to developing countries while official capital flows were declining by 32 billion between 2001 and 2004 while net private inflows increased 140 billion. FDI has also been increasing, but out of the total of 165 billion to developing countries, it was highly concentrated in a few large ones and 88 percent of the increase gone only to five countries, therefore, in order to attract FDI efforts were required through domestic reforms, improved climate and the legal system, which was one of the keys, he stated.