The government is preparing a new model text to negotiate bilateral investment and protection agreements (BIPA) and review the existing ones. The Department of Economic Affairs, after communicating to different ministries, including Commerce and Industry and Petroleum, has said that the government has decided to review the text of BIPA in the light of arbitration notices received under different BIPAs. The BIPA review talks were put on hold after the arbitration notices from foreign companies to recover investments and are likely to resume after finalisation of the model text.
The objective of BIPAs is to promote and protect the interests of investors of foreign countries in the territory of other nation. Such agreements increase the comfort level of the investors by assuring a minimum standard of treatment in all matters and provides the justifiability of disputes with the host country.
India has so far signed BIPAs with 82 countries, of which 72 including Germany, the UK, Russia and the Netherlands have already come into force and the remaining agreements are in the process of being enforced.
India’s template for BIPA negotiations need to be amended as it has faced lots of litigations from the foreign companies. In the telecom sector, several global telecom firms, which had lost their 2G licences following a Supreme Court judgement, have slapped notices on the government citing breach of bilateral investment protection pacts. Supreme Court had cancelled the telecom licences of global telecom players including Sistema, Telenor, Mauritius-based investors in Loop Telecom. While, Vodafone sent a separate notice to the government against amending the Income Tax Act with retrospective effect.
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