Almost every fourth case in the Vitebsk Regional Economic Court is resolved through mediation

January 27, Vitebsk / Sergey Kochetov - BELTA/. The number of economic disputes with the use of mediation procedures in the economic court of the Vitebsk region in 2010 amounted to almost 3.6 thousand cases and increased by 12% compared to 2009. Mediation procedures were used to resolve approximately every fourth application to the economic court by business entities, the head of the court's judicial practice department, Olga Kibisova, told a BELTA correspondent. Out of the total number of cases for which the mediation procedure was initiated, in almost 90% of cases, the parties managed to reach agreements and sign dispute settlement agreements. The effectiveness of this simplified court procedure has increased - based on the results of 2009, the efficiency of mediation procedures was 86%. Business entities most often used mediation to resolve disputes arising from the non-fulfillment of contractual obligations. For 394 cases, the parties failed to conclude agreements, and the materials were transferred to judges for consideration in the claim procedure. The main reasons for the non-settlement of disputes in the mediation procedure were the non-appearance of the parties for participation in the process, as well as the failure to reach an agreement on the subject of the dispute. In addition, in the order production procedure, which is also a simplified procedure for economic legal proceedings, about 23%, or almost 3.4 thousand, of all received applications were considered. At the same time, in the order production procedure, Br267 billion was ordered for recovery, which is 6 times higher than the amount of recovery in the claim procedure. The total amount of claims declared for recovery amounted to almost Br360 billion, of which 88% was recovered in favor of the applicants based on the results of the case review. The court recalled that on January 31, the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On Amendments and Additions to Certain Codes of the Republic of Belarus on Improving Economic Legal Proceedings" comes into force. It provides that in order production, claims for recovery of funds, recovery of property, or enforcement of claims against the debtor's property will be considered if one of the following conditions is met: the claims are undisputed (based on documents confirming the debtor's debt); the claims are acknowledged (not disputed) by the debtor but are not fulfilled; claims are filed for an amount up to one hundred base units (penalties and interest may be included in the claim amount, while the legislation does not prohibit filing such claims in the claim procedure). The advantages of order production include shorter dispute resolution periods, no need to participate in court hearings, a lower state duty rate, and a number of others. -0-