Ingresar
New framework for investment agreements
By PPO Abogados
Bolivia has developed and sent to 15 countries a new framework for investment agreements that looks to fill in the country's long void on the matter by focusing on the definition of investment, performance requirements and dispute resolution.According to El Deber, a multidisciplinary team was formed to develop the new document in accordance to the Bolivian Constitution and other recent regulations established in the Investment Promotion Law of 2014 and the Conciliation and Arbitration Law of 2015.
The proposal is “an international policy strategy to attract direct foreign investment”, stated the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Integration, which has already started negotiations with possible partner countries. Ecuador and Peru, two of Bolivia's partners at the Andean Community, are among the countries to whom this model of investment has been proposed.
The government promotes the framework as a more beneficial treatment to the foreign investor by contemplating dispute settlement mechanisms that normally rule against States. The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Integration informed that, although “few countries have spoke out” on it, “negotiation tables were formed with some of them in order to analyse investments viability and reach a mutually satisfactory text.”
The current draft has been criticized by lawyers, specialists and businessmen who consider that more legal certainty needs to be provided to foreign investors. “Not perfecting the agreements means lost opportunities for the development of very important projects such as lithium and others that could be an economic push for Bolivia,” said Ibo Blazicevic, president of the National Chamber of Industries.
In 2007 Bolivia sent a formal notice to the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) declaring its withdrawal from the ICSID convention and rejecting the legal, media and diplomatic pressure of some multinationals. The country also pursued revisions to its 24 bilateral investment treaties.
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