• Home

Welcome

Mauritius: The establishment of LCIA-MIAC

On 28 July 2011, at the Commonwealth Secretariat, Marlborough House, in London, the Government of the Republic of Mauritius, the LCIA and a new Mauritian company incorporated for the purpose, Mauritius International Arbitration Centre Limited (MIAC), entered into an agreement for the establishment and operation of a new arbitration centre in Mauritius, to be known as LCIA-MIAC Arbitration Centre.



The signing took place in the presence of the Prime Minister of Mauritius, Dr the Hon Navinchandra Ramgoolam, GCSK, FRCP. The Mauritian High Commissioner, H. E. Mr Abhimanu Kundasamy, signed the agreement on behalf of the Government; Sir Hamid Moollan, QC, GOSK, Chairman of MIAC, signed on behalf of MIAC; and Adrian Winstanley, LCIA Director General, signed on behalf of the LCIA. In introducing the event, Salim Moollan, who has assisted the Government at each stage of its plans to develop Mauritius as a centre for international commercial arbitration, reported on the background to the project.





The audience included many distinguished guests, including Ambassadors and High Commissioners from many Commonwealth countries.





As members will be aware, the LCIA resolved, some time ago, that the institution should set its sights on new horizons. It was, after all, routinely administering high value and complex arbitrations between parties from many jurisdictions, the great majority of whom were not English parties, and it seemed time to extend its operational centres beyond its London base.

But this was to be much more than the establishment of overseas offices. The plan, rather, was, and remains, to work with others to establish centres of arbitration excellence relevant to, and convenient and cost effective for, the business and legal communities conducting business in and through the physical location of these centres; whilst recognising the growth, and growing sophistication in arbitration in other jurisdictions.

In pursuit of these new horizons, then, the LCIA entered into a joint venture, in 2008, with the Dubai International Financial Centre to create DIFC-LCIA, followed, in 2009, by the establishment of LCIA India.

And LCIA is delighted to be working now with the Government of Mauritius on the establishment and operation of the LCIA-MIAC Arbitration Centre, to provide the physical centre for the conduct and administration of arbitrations within Mauritius.

This venture recognises the remarkable success that Mauritius has achieved in establishing itself as a facilitator of cross-border trade and investment, and particularly as a conduit for investment flowing into all parts of Africa from India and China, a position that it is intent upon strengthening in the new economic world order borne of the global economic collapse, by which no major economy has been unaffected.

Arbitration has, and always has had, a vital role to play in oiling the wheels of commerce and industry, and it is natural that Mauritius would wish to establish on its shores a reputable and credible legal and physical infrastructure for the conduct of arbitration, in which all stakeholders may have confidence, and that, having laid so solid a foundation in its new Arbitration Act, and in the host country agreement entered into with the PCA, it would wish to establish a physical arbitration centre.

The LCIA enters into this agreement with the Government of the Republic of Mauritius, and the Mauritius International Arbitration Centre Limited, in the hope and expectation that the product of this union, LCIA-MIAC, will make a real contribution to the practice and conduct of international commercial arbitration in the African region and beyond.

Work will now begin on the drafting of arbitration and mediation rules and on setting up and staffing the physical premises, and progress will be reported both by the LCIA and, in due course, on LCIA-MIAC’s website which will shortly be under construction.