Construction and real estate sectors have sent the maximum number of cases to Qatar International Centre for Conciliation and Arbitration (QICCA). The Centre has witnessed an annual rise of around 20 percent in the number of cases of commercial disputes.
“In the centre (QICCA), we witnessed a considerable increase in the number of cases in the last few years. The rise was significant in terms of amount of money involved,” Dr. Minas Khatchadourian, Counsellor, Qatar Chamber. “Every year,we have witnessed increase of 20 percent compared to previous year. Last year we received 275 cases involving over QR1bn, where the highest amount was QR200m while the lowest amount was QR30,000,” he added.
Arbitration is a form of alternative dispute resolution mechanism where parties to a dispute seek the resolution outside the courts and is preferred by many as a way to resolve commercial disputes.
It has significant advantages over litigation in court, such as lower cost and shorter time to resolution, flexibility and privacy. Usually companies stuck in a commercial dispute do not like to get unneccessary publicity and seek privacy in settlement.
Construction and Real Estate sectors are in the top for sending the most number cases to the Arbitration Centre because a project involves a long chain of parties to finish the project.
“In the last five years, one the most important sectors that witnessed lot of disagreements were Costruction, Real Estate and Finance. It is because they are all related to how you can finance a project for development of a real estate,” said Khatchadourian.
“Once the party has funds it starts by bringing a main contractor. This main contractor cannot finish work by himself and he has to work with sub contractors. The sub contractor needs to by goods from suppliers. So your find there is a chain of contractors. In every contract there are two parties or more and these parties are always working with arbitration clause in their contracts. If they fail to settle dispute within themselves, the case come to the Arbitration Centre,” he added.
“Arbitration in Qatar is regulated by a law which dates back to 1990 the law has become obsolete and there is need to modernise the provisions of the law. We have already asked the Ministry of Justice to help us modernise this law,” said Khatchadourian.
