Efforts to promote cross-border trade and investment through convergence of Asia's business laws are gathering momentum. The Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) said today it will host an international conference on legal convergence in Asia and launch the Asian Business Law Institute (ABLI) in January 2016.
The twin initiatives such as the conference titled "Doing Business Across Asia: Legal Convergence in an Asian Century," and the ABLI are receiving support from some of the region's leading judiciaries, corporations and law firms, as well as The Ministry of Law, Singapore and the Economic Development Board of Singapore.
The conference, to be held at the Raffles City Convention Centre on 21 and 22 January 2016, has already drawn a slate of top-notch speakers including Arun Jaitley, Union Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information and Broadcasting, Henri de Castries, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer amongst others.
In addition to this, Singapore's Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law, K Shanmugam SC, will deliver the closing address. The ABLI will initiate, conduct and facilitate research, and produce authoritative texts to guide and support the onvergence of Asian commercial laws. It will also serve as a forum 2 for collaboration between judges, lawyers, businessmen, academics and policy-makers in the region.
The SAL's initiatives are intended as part of the solution to the biggest challenge cited by business leaders in the region. According to a 2013 APEC CEO survey by PwC, respondents cited "inconsistent regulations and standards as the single biggest barrier to their company's growth in Asia-Pacific." In a report last year, The Economist magazine also highlighted "legal uncertainty" as "the most serious operational challenge to growing a regional business in the ASEAN region."
Outlining SAL's vision on legal convergence, the Academy's President, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, said, "Asia stands poised at a unique time in history where economic growth and integration.
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"It will fuel an unprecedented surge in intraregional and cross-border trade and investment," he added.
"However, there is considerable heterogeneity among Asian legal systems, and while a unified 'Asian law' is beyond the realm of possibility in the near future, the time has come to establish common legal norms and practices that will overcome regional differences and pave the way for freer trade and commerce."
Menon noted "We will need a centralised forum for these various stakeholders to exchange ideas, information and proposals, in addition to being a repository for their input. It can also represent a common point of contact for other research agencies and international organizations."
"In this regard, there are many issues that the region's legal and business communities can come together to work on, including identifying the inconsistencies which undermine transnational business, the solutions that are desirable and acceptable, as well as the sort of uniform rules which can apply to cross-border contracts, and how to enforce them."
Among the issues that the ABLI is likely to focus on initially are enforcement of foreign judgement rules in ASEAN, Australia, China and India, streamlining Asian cross-border small claims procedures, an area particularly relevant to the rapidly growing e-commerce sector and fleshing out a set of guiding principles relating to Asian data privacy laws.