Tag Archives: Commercial Court of the High Court of Malawi

Malawi

Commercial Court reduces time it takes to conclude a case by 72%

Henry Chizimba
Commercial Court: reduces time it takes to conclude a commercial matter by 72%

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • The World Bank paid rentals for the Commercial Court for 2 years in Mpico House (previously MDC House).
  • It funded the publication of previous series of Commercial Law Reports and is currently funding a further series yet to be published.
  • It also funded the training of judges by sending them to Tanzania, Zambia, UK, and USA to learn how they run commercial courts and to be trained in mediation.
  • It also funded the training of magistrates locally in the best practices of handling commercial matters.

 

BLANTYRE—(MaraviPost)—The Commercial Court—the Commercial Division of the High Court of Malawi—has reduced the time it takes to conclude cases by 72% percent, The Maravi Post has learnt.

In an interview, the Judge of the  a specCommercial Court Justice John Katsala said that the commercial matters used to take longer time to conclude beforeialized court was established. Justice Katsala stated that The World Bank assisted a great deal in the establishment of the Commercial Court by, among others, funding the training of judges and magistrates and paying the court’s rentals at Mpico House for 2 years.

“Commercial matters used to take almost a year to conclude before the establishment of a court specializing in commercial matters. The Commercial Court has managed to reduce the time taken to conclude commercial disputes from an average of 350 days to an average of just 97 days,” Justice Katsala said.

He said the reduction in time taken to conclude commercial disputes is a positive thing to the business community saying that money gets “locked” when commercial disputes are before the courts hence a need to dispose such disputes as fast as possible to unlock the money back into circulation.

Justice Katsala however bemoaned the conduct of some litigants in commercial disputes who play games to delay matters thereby lengthening case conclusion time and wasting courts’ time and resources.

He also said that the court plans to establish a registry in Mzuzu but would be unable to do so soon owing to the fact that its funding is inadequate.

Said justice Katsala: “The Commercial court intends to open a registry in Mzuzu. For us to do that we need to buy office equipments and employ at least two judges. But the sad thing is that we do not have finances. Our funding cannot help us either because it’s inadequate. But we really would love we opened that registry the soonest time possible.”

The Commercial Court is a commercial division of the High Court which was established on 14 May 2007 with assistance from The World Bank. The court was established in order to speed up disposition of commercial disputes arising out of business transaction. The court has about 60 staff members in its two registries—Blantyre and Lilongwe—and together they handle an average of over 600 cases annually.