The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a private sector arm of the World Bank Group, was awarded in London for its alternative dispute resolution project in Pakistan.
IFC received the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution's Award for Excellence in the "international category". The project has introduced alternative dispute resolution in Pakistan to tackle a massive backlog of 1.1 million civil cases waiting to be heard.
The presentation of the 2006 Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution Awards was attended by 250 participants from the legal and alternative dispute resolution community. IFC's technical assistance facility, PEP-MENA, launched the project in Pakistan in November 2005 in co-operation with the government.
A pilot mediation centre in Karachi will help release assets caught up in legal disputes and will assist small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in handling expensive and lengthy court procedures. The centre will act as a mediation and training institute with a database of regional mediators available across the country.
Contract enforcement in Pakistan normally requires a five to 10 years litigation process, and commonly an average of 35 percent of a company's assets are caught up in the litigation.
Commercial dispute settlement processes are generally seen as slow, inadequate, and inefficient, as well as unable to support market-based growth or encourage domestic and foreign investment.
SMEs constitute 90 percent of the local business in Pakistan, and companies have few alternatives in the event of a contract breach. This situation discourages foreign and local investments in the country. IFC is the largest multilateral provider of financing for private enterprise in developing countries.
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