For more than two years, Pakistan has deliberated over a reform that should have been among the least contentious items on its legal agenda: replacing an arbitration law enacted in 1940 with one suited to 21st-century commerce.

In April 2023, an Arbitration Law Review Committee chaired by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, then a Supreme Court judge, was set up to fix the existing framework. By May 2024, the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan had presented the Arbitration Bill 2024 to the federal law minister, describing the current regime as marked by the "absence of arbitration-friendly rules and time-consuming procedures." With 2027 approaching, the bill has still not been enacted.

Investors have been told to expect it. Nothing has moved. The question is no longer whether Pakistan knows how to modernize its arbitration law, but who benefits from leaving it as it is.

An award that has to be fought over a second time before it can be enforced has lost much of what arbitration promises. - Muhammad Siddique Ali Pirzada

An award that has to be fought over a second time before it can be enforced has lost much of what arbitration promises.

- Muhammad Siddique Ali Pirzada

The status quo is not neutral. It preserves familiar room for discretion while shifting uncertainty onto businesses whose contracts depend on reliable dispute resolution. [He needs to say whose discretion, and who gains from the delay, for example parties resisting enforcement of awards. This is the........

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