The Arbitration Bill has been introduced to the Legislative Council in Hong Kong and had a first reading on 8 July 2009. The Bill is expected to be enacted in the 2009/10 legislative session at the earliest.

Reform of the current arbitration law began in 1998, when the Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators, in cooperation with the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, established the Committee on Hong Kong Arbitration Law (the Committee) to recommend reforms to the existing arbitration law. The Committee issued a report in April 2003, which was followed by a consultation paper from the Department of Justice in December 2007. A draft bill was published in the Gazette on 26 June 2009, which adopted a number of comments from the 40 responses which were received.

Under Hong Kong’s current Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 341), there are separate regimes for domestic and international arbitration. Domestic arbitration is largely based on the United Kingdom arbitration legislation, whereas international arbitration is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (the Model Law). There are also provisions enabling parties to opt in or out of either regime.

The Arbitration Bill proposes to abolish the distinction between domestic and international arbitrations and to create a unitary regime based on the Model Law. Under the proposed new law, users of standard form contracts would still be able to opt in to certain provisions of the former domestic regime. The reform aims to make the law on arbitration more user-friendly, and to enable the Hong Kong business community and arbitration practitioners to operate in an arbitration regime which continues to accord with widely accepted international arbitration practice.