 "Need to revive arbitral centres to win investor confidence: FM")
India, he said, is the bright spot in gloomy world economy and has attracted highest foreign direct investment and to retain investor confidence the nation should have robust mechanism for expeditious disposal of disputes.
For India to become an important arbitral centre, "We need the adequate infrastructure for arbitration, that's an area we have made headway," he said pointing to progress made in setting up arbitration centres at Mumbai.
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Currently, the most respected arbitration centres are in US, UK, Europe and Singapore.
Jaitley said the objective is to "expedite dispute resolution, bring down the cost and incentivise people on arbitrating in India, rather than otherwise."
For India to emerge as a major arbitral centre, it needs "independent and credible set of arbitrators," he said adding besides a pool of independent and credible set of arbitrators, there is a need to nourish talent from fields like academia.
"We need arbitration with a speed, we need arbitration at modest cost. We need to recognise the principle that arbitration being a domestic redressal mode chosen by the contracting parties, contracts should be respected and therefore judicial intervention to be either minimal or virtually non existent," he said.
For economic activity taking place in India, the seat of arbitration must be within the country as otherwise the cost on contracting parties would become unaffordable, he said.
"The objective is India does become an important arbitral centre as an economy which is attracting investment which is a fast growing economy, disputes in relation to that economy should take place in India.
"A country like India has experienced independent and powerful judiciary, there is no reason why we can't have a very independent and robust arbitral mechanism in India," he said.
The Finance Minister said investment is key to any economy and investors today have a choice across the world.
"His anticipated returns, his likelihood of profitability, his security of investment are all key decisions which guide the investment.
"And one key consideration for them is how safe and secure is investment. Will I have the right to exit at the appropriate moment and will I have the right to have expeditious disposal of any issue of dispute in relation to my investment," Jaitley said.
India, he said, needs investment because it has a large infrastructure gap.
Road, highways, railways, airports, seaports, power sectors as well as manufacturing still have a large distance to cover.
"And history has provided us an opportunity where the world today looks at us. For the last two years and hopefully for the next few years we occupy the place of a bright spot as the fastest growing economy in the world.
"And when there is a global slowdown we have still been able to maintain respectable growth rates. We attracted one of the highest foreign direct investments into our economy," he said.
Stating that public spending has increased, he said it was extremely important both from the point of view of the ease of doing business as also to retain the confidence of the investor itself, that Indian system is tuned in order to ensure that it has a robust mechanism for expeditious disposal of any disputes which arise.
Speaking on the occasion, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya said with foreign investments increasing in the economy, there is a need to develop India as a global hub for arbitration.
Panagariya said India is a bright spot in challenging global economy and is projected to grow at 7.5 per cent in current year. Also improvement in ranking of the country in the competitiveness index shows inherent dynamism in the economy.