Ashutosh Ray and Kabir A.N. Duggal
April 9, 2020
On 25 January 2020, India and Brazil signed an investment agreement (the “India-Brazil BIT”). As an agreement that has been signed at the dawn of the new decade, it is symbolic for a few reasons. First, it is a south-south agreement between two large and growing economies. Second, it abandons investor-state arbitration in favor of state-to-state arbitration with an increased focus on dispute prevention. Third, unlike most investment agreements, it expressly provides that a tribunal cannot award compensation. Instead, it only permits a tribunal to interpret the BIT or order conformity of any noncomplying measure—a move potentially inspired from the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.