India, Philippines go slow on BIT push
NEW DELHI : A push by India and the Philippines to renegotiate their investment agreement is moving slowly, according to persons aware of the matter. The agreement, which was signed in 2000 and came into force in 2001, expired in 2011. New Delhi has called for the agreement to be terminated and replaced by a new Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT).
The negotiations were delayed by the covid-19 pandemic. According to persons cited above, both sides also discussed kicking off the talks in June during a meeting between foreign ministers S. Jaishankar and Enrique Manalo.
Those talks also saw progress on signing a preferential trade agreement (PTA). After the meeting, the two sides are understood to have had a round of talks virtually where they exchanged their templates for an investment agreement. However, those talks did not make much progress and matters have progressed little since.
Queries mailed to the ministries of external affairs and commerce were not answered by press time. Indian investments in the Philippines are valued at around $900 million. Bilateral trade stands at around $3 billion in 2022-23.
India is negotiating investment treaties alongside free trade agreements with several of its trading partners, including the UK and EU, that are looking for stronger investment protection than afforded by the 2016 model BIT. The government annulled BITs based on texts framed back in 1993 after receiving adverse judgments in multi-billion dollar investor-state disputes in international courts. To prevent this, the model BIT included “exhaustion of local remedies" as a clause which in effect emphasized state rights over investor rights.
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