PIAF asks govt to settle Reko Diq issue

The Pakistan Industrial & Traders Association Front (PIAF) chairman Mian Nauman Kabir has appreciated the efforts of the government to settle the Karkey case, avoiding a penalty of $1.2 billion, asking the authorities to also resolve the Reko Diq case.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), one of the five organizations of the World Bank Group, had announced a huge award of $5.97 billion against Pakistan in the Reko Diq case in July this year.

Mian Nauman said that the Reko Diq mining issue was grossly mishandled from its very inception, from its gross administrative to bureaucratic mismanagement of letting it go to ICSID. He said that Pakistan, which has already been facing a financial crisis, was slapped with compensation penalty of around $6 billion.

Most of the problems, whether economic crisis or threats of terrorism, extremism and political instability that threaten our national interest, are the result of our own mishandlings, he added.

He congratulated the government for resolving the Karkey dispute, adding that the $1.2 billion, which was a penalty imposed by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), should now be spent on the development of the country, besides provisions of better facilities to the masses.

As per reports, Karkey, the Turkish rental electricity provider, filed an arbitration claim against the Government of Pakistan for various unilateral termination of the Rental Services Contract and detention of its ships before the ICSID under Pakistan-Turkey Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), 1995.

The proceedings before ICSID were held between March 23 and March 26, 2018. On August 22, 2018, the ICSID awarded against Government of Pakistan an amount of $760 million along with interest thereupon. After the award, Karkey has gone into enforcement of arbitration award against Pakistan in various jurisdictions including the US, the UK, Germany and France.

"It's a good news that the government with the help of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had amicably resolved the Karkey dispute. The resolution of the Karkey dispute had saved Pakistan $1.2 billion penalty imposed by the ICSID."

PIAF senior vice chairman Nasir Hameed also congratulated the government team for doing an excellent job, appealing them to take the up the issue of Reko Diq mining with the concerned company too and put their best effort and utilize diplomatic ties to get this dispute resolved so that the country could get rid of this record high penalty of $5.976 billion.

He also hailed the improvement in country's economic positions, saying that the current account deficit has declined by 64 percent in the first quarter of the ongoing FY20, whereas, the primary budget balance has witnessed surplus of Rs.285 billion.

Talking about paying off foreign loans, he said the government has also managed to pay off foreign loans of $10.5 billion, which is a good news for the economy of the country.

However, he raised his serious concern over the rising circular debt, which has jumped to Rs.1200 billion from Rs.450 billion, which might paralyze the overall power system of the country.