Commercial Arbitration Centre for Kurunegala

Since the enactment of the Arbitration Act 11 of 1995 based on UNCITRAL Model Arbitration Law commercial dispute resolution has been confined to Colombo.

The benefit of business friendly, expeditious, and non-adversarial method of resolving of contractual disputes did not flow down to other parts of the country or to the vast majority Sinhalese and Tamil speaking public.

In order to rectify this situation, the Institute for the Development of Commercial Law and Practice (ICLP) Arbitration Center, the only Institutional Arbitration Centre in Sri Lanka will open an Arbitration Centre in Kurunegala on February 11, 2006. A discussion will be held from 3.00 p.m. at the Bright Bravo Hall, Kurunegala.

This Centre would function in Sinhala and English and would have the benefit trained Arbitrators in resolving disputes in a less costly, expeditious manner. ICLP Arbitration Center has so far trained 35 professionals from diverse disciplines such as engineering, public, service, accounting and law through diploma course conducted in 2004/2005.

ICLP would also be introducing for the first time in Sri Lanka, "Expedited Arbitration" where a dispute should be arbitrated within a very short period of time on pre-determined fees which would be a small percentage of the claim involved. Expedited Arbitration would meet the present criticism that arbitration is protracted and expensive as litigation.