The Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to pro­claim the Ar­bi­tra­tion Act 2023.

Speak­ing at a sen­si­ti­sa­tion con­fer­ence on the leg­is­la­tion at Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day morn­ing, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, said the leg­is­la­tion will mod­ernise ar­bi­tra­tion in T&T by pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work.

He said it will make this coun­try com­pli­ant with the re­quire­ments of the Unit­ed Na­tions Com­mis­sion on In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Law (UNCI­TRAL).

“The ob­ject of the Act among oth­ers is to fa­cil­i­tate do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al trade and com­merce by en­cour­ag­ing the use of ar­bi­tra­tion as a method of re­solv­ing dis­putes . . . Leave your court clothes at home,” Ar­mour said.

Ar­mour chose to not wear a busi­ness suit for the event to demon­strate his per­son­al sup­port of the leg­is­la­tion as a long-serv­ing at­tor­ney-at-law.

“On a sig­nif­i­cant and not a jok­ing note I would like to de­clare that I left my court clothes at home . . . be­cause I am a pas­sion­ate be­liev­er in al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion,” he said.

He point­ed out that the leg­is­la­tion cov­ers all as­pects of ar­bi­tra­tion from the ini­tial agree­ment to utilise it to the ac­tu­al award at the end of the process.

“It paves the path for T&T to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion when ne­go­ti­at­ing com­mer­cial con­tracts since con­duct­ing ar­bi­tral pro­ceed­ings right here in T&T will be seen as a vi­able op­tion,” he said.

Ar­mour said ar­bi­tra­tion would be es­pe­cial­ly de­sir­able for those in the fields of in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping, man­u­fac­tur­ing and sport.

He was care­ful to note that he was able to con­vince Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to sign off on a pro­vi­sion which pro­vides tax ex­emp­tions for ar­bi­tra­tors or for­eign rep­re­sen­ta­tives in an in­ter­na­tion­al ar­bi­tra­tion which lasts for a con­tin­u­ous pe­ri­od of 30 days or less dur­ing a cal­en­dar year.

“We are im­prov­ing our jus­tice res­o­lu­tion sys­tem by this act,” he said.

Ar­mour de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress that was sup­posed to be de­liv­ered by his col­league Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon. He said Gopee-Scoon could not at­tend based on the ad­vice of her doc­tor.

In her speech, Gopee-Scoon said the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with ar­bi­tra­tion is de­sir­able for com­pa­nies who may suf­fer a loss of good­will if dis­putes re­sult in pub­lic lit­i­ga­tion.

“The 2023 ar­bi­tra­tion act pro­vides those com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es with a dis­pute res­o­lu­tion al­ter­na­tive with the prime ethos of speed, lim­i­ta­tion of costs, and in pri­vate dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, a de­gree of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty,” she said.

She al­so stat­ed that lawyers, char­tered sur­vey­ors and oth­ers with spe­cialised pro­fes­sions would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve as ar­bi­tra­tors or par­tic­i­pate in such pro­ceed­ings. (Derek Achong)