Abstract

This research paper examines the foreign investment laws and procedure of Pakistan and their role in protection of foreign investment in Pakistan. These laws are untapped area of research and one cannot find any specific research tracing the legal development in this highly specialized field. So far Pakistan has 48 BITs enforced with different countries and has also signed ICSID Convention, which is promulgated locally through Arbitration Act, 2011 incorporating the Convention in the schedule to ease the difficulty of foreign investors to enforce the awards rendered under auspices of ICSID in the territory of Pakistan. Under this research, an attempt has been made to study prevalent foreign investment laws and its trends in Pakistan. Though Pakistan has significantly improved its foreign investment regime by introducing new investor’s friendly laws like, Special Economic Zones Act, 2011 and Investment Policy, 2013 etc., apart from its previous legislation on the subject, yet this regime needs more improvement and updating. Extensive overview of all existing foreign investment laws were carried out in this research. Fair and Equitable Treatment, Expropriation and other factors affecting foreign investment laws are the areas, which need to be taken care of by policy maker in the existing foreign investment laws of Pakistan. With these aims, it is hoped that this research paper would be a humble contribution in the literature on the subject.