The Greeks Have Spoken: What Happens Next?

By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | July 7, 2015

The Greek citizens have delivered a resounding ‘No’ to bailout conditions demanded by creditors in a referendum held on 5^th July. The referendum was announced by Greece’s Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, on 27^th June after bailout talks with the creditors failed. The referendum asked voters to decide “whether to accept the outline of the agreement submitted by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund at the Eurogroup of 25/06/15.”

The government-backed ‘No’ side won with 61.31 percent of votes, while ‘Yes’ got the remaining 38.69 percent. Further, not a single electoral district of Greece voted for ‘Yes’. No one in…

Read More |

Comments Off

The Never Ending Saga of Greece’s Debt Crisis

By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | July 2, 2015

The Greek debt crisis saga continues with no resolution in sight. As expected, the European leaders rejected a last-minute proposal by Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece, requesting an extension of bailout program that expired on 30^th June and seeking a new €29.1 billion bailout package that could have covered country’s debt obligations over the next two years.

The rejection led the country to default on its €1.6 billion loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund. Greece is the first developed country to default to the IMF. Even though IMF does not use the term default, it will now classify Greece as being “in arrears”…

Read More |

Comments Off

Decoding India’s New Model BIT (III)

By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | June 16, 2015

The concept of expropriation has always been, and continues to be, a controversial issue in international investments. In particular, most problematic is the interpretation of the concept of “indirect expropriation” which has been widely used by international investors to challenge a wider range of regulatory measures on health, environment and public safety that infringe on their investment rights. For instance, a number of private corporations have used regulatory expropriation provisions under Chapter 11 of NAFTA to sue governments and demanded cash compensation for government regulations that have incidentally or marginally affected their investments.

India’s new model BIT does not allow nationalization or expropriation of an…

Read More |

Comments Off

Decoding India’s New Model BIT (II)

By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | June 8, 2015

The new model BIT has completely excluded Most Favoured Nation (MFN) obligation and has considerably narrowed down the scope and content of national treatment (NT) and FET clauses. Besides, vague provisions have been clearly defined and additional qualifications have been incorporated to avoid their expansive interpretations by arbitral tribunals. In the recent past, arbitral tribunals have interpreted vague obligations (such as FET) in totally conflicting ways thereby creating more confusion than clarity. These amendments are intended to preserve the policy space of host states to pursue developmental and other objectives that may be difficult to reconcile with the framework of investment treaty obligations. The…

Read More |

Comments Off

Decoding India’s New Model BIT (I)

By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | May 11, 2015

In 2013, India launched an official review of its bilateral investment treaties in the wake of public outcry over arbitration notices issued by several foreign investors. Since India negotiates BITs on the basis of a model, the purpose of the review was to revise the 1993 model treaty text in tune with the recent developments and to provide a roadmap for the re-negotiation of country’s existing BITs. In April 2015, the government released a new model treaty text which will replace the previous model text of 1993 and invited comments from public.

So far, India has signed bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with 86 countries. Apart…

Read More |

Comments Off