Will take about a year for GMR arbitration process to begin in court: Azima

Attorney General Aishath Azima Shakoor has said that it will take about a year for proceedings on the GMR case filed for arbitration to commence.

During a press conference held today with regard to the GMR issue, Azima said that an arbitrator has already been appointed by the Maldivian government and that GMR has been given a period of 30 days to appoint their arbitrator.

An expert from the National University of Singapore will be representing Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL) and the government of Maldives.

Azima also said that in addition to an arbitrator from the government of Maldives, an arbitrator from GMR and an independent arbitrator also have to be appointed, and that this process alone could take two months. She said that therefore, she does not think that the arbitration process will begin soon.

“Then there will be the process of exchanging documents, and replying to these documents. A year may pass before a proper hearing takes place. At least about 6 months. We have two months ahead of us, then about 7 months to gather a panel and exchange documents with the panel,” said Azima.

Even though GMR is demanding $800 million as compensation, Azima said that she does not believe that the government owes the company any compensation. She also said that this is their position because the government believes that the GMR agreement is “void ab initio” (to be considered as invalid from onset). She also said that if the government owes the company any compensation, that will be decided through the arbitration process.

She said that it is possible that the government has to pay a certain amount as compensation because it was a big investment, and this will all be decided by arbitration. She also said that they had faced problems because an asset valuation was not done at the time of the signing of the agreement. She said that the means to value the assets of the airport, or a value for compensation has not yet been calculated. She also said that if it is known through the arbitration process that GMR owes the government of Maldives any amount of money, it will be duly demanded.

“It has not been decided how we are going to calculate it. A lot of work is being done right now, but the amount that has to be paid back or the amount that was invested; none of this has been calculated yet. We don’t even have a means to calculate them yet,” said Azima.

The Singapore Court of Appeals earlier supported the decision by the government to annul the GMR agreement and order the company to hand over the airport to MACL. Azima said that this ruling by the Singapore Court of Appeals in support of the government’s decision was a “victory”, and that it was a good victory.