The Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front (PIAF) have appreciated the government efforts for settling the Karkey case, avoiding a penalty of $1.2 billion, asking the authorities to also resolve the Reko Diq case.
The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), one of the five organizations of the World Bank Group, had announced a huge award of $5.97 billion against Pakistan in the Reko Diq case in July this year, PIAF chairman Mian Nauman Kabir said.
The Reko Diq mining issue was grossly mishandled from its very inception, from its gross administrative to bureaucratic mismanagement of letting it go to ICSID. He said that Pakistan, which has already been facing a financial crisis, was slapped with compensation penalty of around $6 billion.
Most of the problems, whether economic crisis or threats of terrorism, extremism and political instability that threaten our national interest, are the result of our own mishandlings, he added. He congratulated the government for resolving the Karkey dispute that helped country avoid payment of $1.2 billion.
As per reports, Karkey, the Turkish rental electricity provider, filed an arbitration claim against the Government of Pakistan for various unilateral termination of the Rental Services Contract and detention of its ships before the ICSID under Pakistan-Turkey Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), 1995. The proceedings before ICSID were held between March 23 and March 26, 2018. On August 22, 2018, the ICSID awarded against Government of Pakistan an amount of $760 million along with interest thereupon. After the award, Karkey has gone into enforcement of arbitration award against Pakistan in various jurisdictions including the US, the UK, Germany and France, he said.
"It's good news that the government with the help of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had amicably resolved the Karkey dispute. The resolution of the Karkey dispute had saved Pakistan $1.2 billion penalty imposed by the ICSID" he maintained.
PIAF senior vice chairman Nasir Hameed also hailed improvement in the country's economic positions, saying that the current account deficit has declined by 64 percent in the first quarter of the ongoing FY20.
Talking about paying off foreign loans, he said the government has also managed to pay off foreign loans of $10.5 billion, which is also positive news for the economy of the country.
However, he raised his serious concern over the rising circular debt, which has jumped to Rs1200 billion from Rs450 billion, which might paralyze the overall power system of the country.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2019
Comments
Comments are closed.