ISDS Case Map
Bolivia
The countries that make up the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) trade block met in Venezuela this Wednesday for a meeting of the ALBA Ministers. The meeting set forth some of the future integration projects, the organizational structure, and the countries agreed on the formation of an ALBA development bank.
Investment Treaty News has learned that Bolivia has sent a formal notice to the World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) declaring its withdrawal from the ICSID convention.
The sixth Hemispheric Meeting to Fight Free Trade Agreements and for integration of the peoples began sessions at Havana Convention Center on Thursday.
When Bolivian President Evo Morales took office in January 2006, he pledged to follow through on his campaign pledge to increase Bolivians' share of revenues from their major source of foreign income, natural gas. International gas companies, however, threatened to sue. Previous Bolivian governments had signed a flurry of bilateral investment treaties that gave foreign investors the right to bypass domestic courts and file such lawsuits through international tribunals. Morales complained that these rules made him feel like a “prisoner” in the presidential palace.
Bolivia and Venezuela, both nationalizing huge swathes of their economies, should quit a World Bank body that arbitrates between foreign investors and states, Bolivia's president said on Sunday.
Presidents including Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales are bypassing the US in reaching trade accords and strengthening diplomatic and commercial ties with nations that compete with, or are hostile toward, US interests.
The Social Summit for the People's Integration, to be held in December in Cochabamba, will condemn Washington-encouraged free trade agreements, members of the organizing committee informed.
Bolivian President Evo Morales rejected on Monday the free trade agreements the United States is trying to impose on the regional nations, considering them overwhelming for small economies, and counterpoised the Trade Agreement with the Peoples.
In the last 14 months, the Bolivarian Movement of Struggle against the FTA and FTAA and its successor, the Bolivarian Movement for the Sovereignty and Integration of People, have been preparing a proposal for a debate in the Constituent Assembly which was set up the 6th of August in Sucre. It is not a legal document but a platform of minimal principles to contribute to the debate.
Bolivian Government outlines the principles which it feels are essential for achieving a just trade and cooperation treaty with the US.
