Promoting Investment among APEC Economies

(Ho Chi Minh City - 4 November 2017) Last week, Vietnam Business Lawyer Club (VBLC) co-operated with Inter-Pacific Bar Association and Vietnam International Arbitration Centre to organize the “Promoting Investment among APEC Economies” Conference. With many interesting discussion panels, the conference attracted lawyers, big corporations and policy makers from all over the region.

APEC Importance in Vietnamese Economy

With the Summit Week of APEC 2017 is at the corner, the conference was proud to have many famous guests from international law firms, the legal departments from big corporations and international speakers from New York, Washington, Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Phnompenh… Besides, a high attendance with many lawyers, business representatives and lawmakers from all over the region was also a success of the conference.

As an opening speech, the Vice President of VIAC, Mr. Vu Xuan Phong highly valued the role of APEC in Vietnam economic growth. APEC is an organization, which alone accounted for 70% foreign relationship of Vietnam, 78% Foreign Direct Investment, 38% Development Aid and 79% foreign tourists. He also emphasized the importance to foster the co-operation among APEC Economies in all areas, including commercial arbitration.

“A thorough co-operation in term of economic within APEC is a good sign for development. However, this also leads to the increase of commercial disputes among corporations, businesses in the member countries. Therefore, VIAC will continue to co-operate with other arbitration centres in the region to improve and update its dispute settlement procedure to achieve efficiency and boost the economy within the region”

Many hot issues covered

Attending and contributing in many hot topics during an one day conference were many reputed arbitrator in VIAC. In the session “ASEAN and its contribution in APEC, Mr. Luong Van Trung, VIAC Arbitrator and Partner of Lexcomm shared that the dynamic of ASEAN is and will be the drive of APEC for years to come. Not only in economic, the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community with its unified legal framework is expected to be a huge step for the growth of ASEAN in particular and APEC in general.

In the session “Vietnam Equitization”, Dr. Le Net, VIAC Arbitrator, Managing Partner of LNT emphasized the efficiency when using development aid from APEC members in Vietnam. To achieve this, he frankly shared that Vietnam needed to lower its corruption and develop long term plan to attract foreign investors.

Arbitration in APEC: Toward efficiency and fairness

The last session of the Conference was “Dispute Settlement among APEC Economies”. This interesting session was moderated by Mr. Chau Viet Bac, Deputy Secretary General of VIAC and famous speakers from reputed arbitration centres, prestige law firms in the region. To name a few, Mr. Do Khoi Nguyen - Member of YKVN Singapore, Profesor, Dr Colin Ong - Arbitration Association of Brunei Darussalam, Mr. Kevin Kwek - Co-Managing Partner of Kenedy Legal Solution (Singapore) and Lawyer Mahesh Rai - Director of Drew & Napier LLC.

These speakers have brought to the conference many new and efficient solutions to improve the dispute settlement procedure. These solutions include how to draft an arbitration clause which can reduce the cost, risk and time; frequent training programs for arbitrators from their arbitration centers to share good practices and update latest international trend. Moreover, the conference also introduced many good training documents such as IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration, Protocol for use of Party - Appointed Witness in International Arbitration of CiArb and ICC Techniques for Managing Electronic Document Prodution

Moreover, some of the latest trend in international arbitration such as: Emergency Arbitrators, Early dismissal, Unless Order and the Enforceability of Emergency Arbitrators’ Decisions… Mr. Chau Viet Bac found all the solutions useful; however, the application of those relied much on Commercial Arbitration Law of each country. In Vietnam, the 2010 Commercial Arbitration Law, after nearly 7 years in practice, needed a major modification to facilitate the use of commercial arbitration better in the future.

After one day of discussing, the conference ended in a high note, leaving the guests with good impression. In the future, VIAC will co-operated with more international organizations to bring more international conferences to Vietnam for the lawyer, business and other related communities.

Vietnam International Arbitration Centre