Realising the full benefits of Islamic economy

Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak thinks that the maximum potential of the Islamic economy, including finance, banking, industry, waqaf and the insurance takaful, is still not fully realised. However, there are many challenges that need to be addressed: strong support from the political leadership to make things happen; institution building; human capital development; the shortage of expertise in many areas like Islamic finance, standardisation and regulatory framework; syariah experts to make sure your products are syariah-compliant, among others. Regarding SMEs, Malaysia has a masterplan for their development, with the goal to make SMEs achieve about 41 per cent of GDP by 2020.