India Kicks-Off Insolvency Conference To Discuss Issues, Way Forward

India on Thursday kicked-off an international research conference to discuss various issues and challenges on the insolvency matters as well as the way forward to make the country’s bankruptcy law more effective.

The three-day conference, which was inaugurated by the National Company Law Tribunal President Ramalingam Sudhakar, is being held at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). The conference is jointly organized by IIMB and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).

The conference will see presentation of 40 research papers, including artificial intelligence-based risk assessment of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India, the IBBI said in a statement.

There will also be discussions on several other topics from the industry, legal practitioners and academicians to assess and understand the present while setting course for the future for the insolvency regime in the country, it added.

“Researchers like you can give the input that we need to ensure that the insolvency process is driven not only by the human mind, but also by technology and artificial intelligence,” Sudhakar told the gatherings.

The conference aims to act as a forum for academic researchers, professionals, financial creditors and policy makers to discuss impending issues on making India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) more effective as an institutional mechanism, according to the IBBI.

“The research that you have done [and] the research papers that you will present tomorrow, we will take them very seriously,” IBBI Chairperson Ravi Mital said. “We hope that we get a large number of ideas from those research papers from the discussions that you have and that will help us in the policy formation.”

The IBC – India’s first comprehensive law to address the insolvency of corporate persons and individuals – was enacted in December 2016 and the law has already undergone several amendments to improve the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP).

To further strengthen the functioning of the IBC, the government is considering several changes to the code and recently sought public comments. The deadline to submit comments ended earlier this month and further process to implement the proposed changes is ongoing.

The proposed changes are related to the admission of CIRP applications, streamlining the insolvency resolution process, recasting the liquidation process, and the role of service providers under the code.

The resolution plans materialized under the IBC has helped creditors realize a total of 2.53 lakh crore rupees ($30.53 billion) until December 2022 since the inception of the bankruptcy law in 2016, according to the IBBI.

(Note: $1 = 82.8569 Indian rupees)

(Send feedback to editor@cornerofficejournal.com)