Kuala Lumpur Regioinal Centre For Arbitration (KLRCA) – Changes In The Arbitration Rules

Legal Update November 2013

The KLRCA amended its arbitration rules in October 2013. Datuk Sundra Rajoo, the Director of the KLRCA, mentioned that the revisions to the rules were made in order for the KLRCA to keep abreast with both global and national developments in alternative dispute resolution.

Some of the key amendments in the KLRCA Arbitration Rules are as follows:

• Emergency arbitrator provisions. The emergency arbitrator provision provides an option for parties where they require urgent interim and conservatory relief. This increases party autonomy, providing certainty and minimizing judicial intervention. Parties are now able to obtain the full breadth of commercial remedies within the auspices of their KLRCA administered arbitration proceedings.
• Pre-award interest. The power for arbitrators to grant pre-award interest has also been included.
• Consolidation of proceedings. New provisions have also been added regarding consolidation of proceedings and concurrent hearings to ensure consistency.
• Strengthened confidentiality requirements to enhance privacy of proceedings. The only exclusion is where the matter falls under the public domain or disclosure is necessitated by legal requirements.
• Costs. To maintain the KLRCA’s cost advantage over other institutions, the schedule of fees and administrative costs has been revised. This revision promotes fairness and equitability within the arbitration procedure. Where the Director of the KLRCA has fixed separate advance preliminary deposits on costs, each of the parties shall pay the advance preliminary deposit corresponding to its claims.
• In its journey towards internationalization, the KLRCA has also translated all of KLRCA’s Rules into six languages. They are: Spanish, Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia.