GMR-Maldives arbitration to start next year

Arbitration proceedings in the airport contract row between Maldives and GMR Group will start in the middle of next year. Maldives’ Deputy Solicitor General Ahmed Usham, who represented his government in the preliminary hearing on the arbitration proceedings held in London, said both parties had agreed to commence proceedings by the middle of 2014 and were now waiting on arbitrators to confirm the exact schedule for when their respective cases would be presented.

Asked about the meeting, a GMR spokesperson said in New Delhi that it was ‘the first meeting and primarily preliminary in nature. We await the procedural orders from the panel’. Haveeru reported that GMR had proposed to commence proceedings next April, while the government had proposed next September.