KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is on track to become the world’s leading global Islamic Finance Hub, said Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Ir Amiruddin Hamzah.
Amiruddin said Malaysia had the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation (IILM) which was established in 2010 in cooperation with 12 central banks around the world, and its main function is to pioneer government initiatives involving the development of Islamic finance globally.
“According to Thomson Reuters’s Islamic Financial Development Report in 2018, Malaysia remains the leader among 56 countries for Islamic financial institutions, and this shows that the establishment of the corporation in 2010, which was the government’s ‘frontier’ to develop the country’s Islamic finance at the global level was the right step towards making Kuala Lumpur the best Global Islamic Finance hub,” he said in a question and answer session at the Dewan Negara today.
He was responding to Senator Asmak Husin’s question on the government’s measures to make Malaysia the world’s leading global Islamic Finance Hub.
Amiruddin said Bank Negara Malaysia was also appointed as the regulator and lead manager of sovereign ‘sukuk’ or bonds for other countries such as Turkey and Hong Kong, which also proved that Malaysia was now internationally recognised as a leader in international Islamic finance.
In answering a supplementary question from Asmak on the government’s plans to increase talent and human capital in Islamic finance from Malaysia, Amiruddin said the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) offered masters and doctoral programmes to meet the needs of Islamic financial expertise from Malaysia.
“In fact, in 2018, INCEIF received the prestigious accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) which placed INCEIF among the preferred five per cent of international institutions offering Islamic business and finance programmes,” he added. – Bernama
