The QICDRC Chief Executive Officer, Faisal Rashid Al Sahouti, during the media round table, yesterday. Pic Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula
With long term growth plans in the pipeline, the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC) is poised to emerge as a regional centre for arbitration and dispute resolution, before coming out as an international centre for the dispute resolution.
The soon-to-be-released new law will act as one of the major triggers for QICDRC’s future growth, its Chief Executive Officer Faisal Rashid Al Sahouti said yesterday.
Unveiling QICDRC’s future plans at a media round table on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of QICDRC, Al Sahouti said Qatar is currently moving toward a new direction and QICDRC is repositioning accordingly, targeting a new and wider regions. For QICDRC, the next 10 years will be ‘growth years’, he said.
A new partnership agreement between the Court and the Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) is set to expand the jurisdiction of the Court to cover entities operating under the QFZA. The new agreement, which will be announced in a new law that will be issued later this year, will reflect an unprecedented expansion of the Court’s jurisdiction since its establishment, and further advance its position locally and regionally as a specialised judicial authority.
Al Sahouti explained that the signing of the new agreement will be indicative of an active market and comes as a testament to the rapid growth witnessed in the local economy in the past several years, both in the private and public sectors.
“The announcement of the new agreement exemplifies the rapid growth of QICDRC in the past ten years and comes as a reflection of the significant increase in the economic activities in Qatar as part of the economic development plans of the Qatar National Vision 2030,” said Al Sahouti.
Amid the evident growth of the Qatari economy, QICDRC’s main mission continues to focus on ensuring an effective and fast delivery of justice and establishing an authoritative legal framework that helps advance Qatar’s reputation as a trustworthy business environment. On fast delivery of justice, he added, currently the time taken by the court to dispose of a case three to six months.
This fast delivery of justice will help litigants to get early access to liquidity.
The Court was designed to have international standards in dispute resolution and provide QFC registered entities with access to an authoritative judicial system that specialises in resolving civil and commercial disputes.
“The legal system adopted at QICDRC is a key attraction to international companies and investments that look to expand their work to Qatar and want the assurance of a specialised, foreseeable and efficient legal system that they can resort to in the case of legal disputes,” said Al Sahouti.
On the Court’s ability to enforce its judgments, Al Sahouti said that the QFC Law No. 2 of 2009 established the Court and gave it the power to enforce its judgments. It was not, however, until 2015 that the Court started receiving applications from litigants requesting the Court to enforce the issued judgments.
The Court’s ability to enforce its judgments against entities that are not registered under the QFC gives the model an advantage over similar legal models in the region and ensures the effective delivery of justice.
