Pakistan to terminate 23 bilateral investment treaties

Pakistan has decided to terminate 23 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with different countries in order to avoid international arbitration with foreign firms on commercial contracts.

According to a report by the Express Tribune on Thursday, so far 10 cases have been lodged by foreign investors in different international arbitral forums, thus exposing the state of Pakistan to billions of dollars in compensation whereas there are nine other bilateral investment treaties.

However, those nine treaties could be terminated or reformed by engaging the respective countries bilaterally.

Pakistan mulled over an option of taking up these nine treaties with the respective states to revise them in line with its revised BIT strategy.

There are 16 other treaties which the government does not want to ratify to avoid financial exposure in case foreign firms file cases in international courts due to litigation in commercial contracts with Pakistan.

All 16 un-ratified BITs may not be further processed for ratification. In case of non-agreement by the other state(s); the following strategy may be adopted on case to case basis. The BOI proposed to engage the contracting states for signing the Joint Interpretation Protocol to mitigate its harmful effects; or it proposed to engage the contracting states in amending certain provisions like ISDS, FET, SBA, and expropriation etc. In case none of the above two options were possible, Pakistan would have to wait till the timeline of termination as provided in the respective BIT is reached.