» Turkey Spreads Islamic Finance, Malaysia issues Islamic Sukuk in the local currency

The Malaysian government has successfully issued social responsibility Islamic Sukuk (in the local Ringgit) currency, for the purpose of financing the educational programs at schools and helping children arrive to schools more easily, all of these, through (Sukuk Al-Ehsan) institution, which established by Malaysia for this purpose. The value of this Sukuk is one hundred million Ringgits, which is equivalent to twenty six million dollars. This is the first step in a program whose value may reach one billion Ringgits. The underwriting of the full value of Sukuk was completed in one day. The Sukuk profit ratio amounted 3 to 4 %. The underwriting included investment companies and funds as well as banks; these capital raised will be allocated to finance schools within a non-profit education fund via a public -private partnership for education promotion.

"The province intends to collect 200 million dollars from its first issues of Islamic bonds and float them in order to contribute to financing infrastructure projects." said, Murad Ali Shah, the Minister of Finance of Sindh province in Pakistan. By the execution of this transaction, Sindh will be the first province in Pakistan that collects money from the public debt market in the wake of the Pakistan government’s return to Sukuk by an issuance amounting to five billion dollars for a five-year term. The financial supervision authorities in the country are launching a raft of initiatives to contribute to the development of Islamic finance in the Muslim majority country. Sindh’s first issuance of bonds may encourage other provinces to use this type of finance.

During its presidency of the G-20, Turkey plans to increase global awareness about the importance of Islamic Finance. "Ankara strongly believes in the vital role of the Islamic finance industry in providing finance to infrastructure projects and small companies." said, Burhan Al-Din Aktash, the Undersecretary of the Turkish Treasury Ministry. He added that Turkey, during its presidency of the G-20, will work on enhancing the participation of Islamic finance in the global financial system, especially as some non-Muslim countries want to play a principal role in Islamic finance. Note that the G-20 includes the most prominent economic powers in the world. Beside US, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany, some developing countries could appear such as India, Turkey, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.