In Africa, Angola has agreements in this field with South Africa, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, in Asia, with Qatar, and in Europe with Portugal, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Russia and France.
Agreements of this nature with Japan, Ukraine and Belarus are being negotiated, according to AIPEX, this Thursday, during an APPRI seminar.
APPRI are bilateral agreements aimed at demonstrating to international investors the existence of a legal and security mechanism for making their investments.
According to AIPEX administrator José Chinjamba, the meeting's lecturer, the architecture of the latest generation APPRI should include a limited definition of investment, "clearly defining the assets that should be protected".
"Clarification of provisions such as indirect expropriation, fair and most-favoured-nation treatment", as well as the resolution of investor versus state controversies, namely transparency in arbitration procedures, open sessions, publication of documents and public participation of civil society should also be included in the agreements.
With regard to arbitration awards in the area of foreign investment, José Chinjamba reported that 106 cases of arbitration proceedings against African states were registered in 2019, to the value of 55.5 billion dollars, of which only 4.6 billion dollars were paid.
According to the AIPEX administrator, a proposal for the creation of a "multilateral dispute settlement force" resulting from foreign investment in the continent is currently being drafted by the African Arbitration Association.
"Because when a dispute occurs in Africa it is resolved in Europe and often there is no intervention of African citizens in these arbitrations and the tendency at that time is to try to reverse this picture," he noted.
