IslamicFinance.de

Research by Morgan McKinley found a surge in the global value of Islamic banking assets is forecasted for the next few years. Figures are predicted to reach $6.5 trillion by 2020, a huge leap compared to the amount of $150 billion in the mid-1990s. In the UAE alone, the total Islamic banking assets accrued in 2013 was $95 billion (compared to $83 billion in 2012), and it is showing no signs of slowing down, with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce predicting that the annual growth rate will reach 17 per cent until 2018. The increase has been with all consumers, with a recent study from Bloomberg concluding that in the UAE, Islamic finance has also gained popularity amongst non-Muslim expats.

Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB) has signed an agreement with Moroccan lender Credit Immobilier et Hotelier S.A. (CIH Bank) to set up a bank in Morocco. In November, central bank governor Abdellatif Jouahri said Morocco would start issuing Islamic banking licences within the next year. QIIB will take a 40 percent stake in the new bank, which is expected to launch in coming months after necessary approvals, the Qatari institution said on Thursday without giving details of the venture. The Qatari joint venture is part of QIIB's strategy to pursue overseas investments and diversity its portfolio, the lender said in a bourse statement. Islamic banks from Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have also expressed interest in entering Morocco.

Capital Intelligence (CI) has affirmed Jordan Islamic Bank’s (JIB) Long- and Short-Term Foreign Currency Ratings (FCRs) at ‘BB-’ and ‘B’, respectively. JIB’s FCRs are constrained by Jordan's sovereign ratings (‘BB-’/’B’/ ‘Stable’), reflecting JIB’s base of operations in Jordan and its exposure to the Jordanian sovereign in the form of balances at the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ). The Support Level of ‘3’ is affirmed, on the basis of the high likelihood of support from the CBJ in case of need, and from the parent Al-Baraka Banking Group in Bahrain. The Outlook for JIB’s FCRs remains ‘Stable’, in line with the Outlook for Jordan’s Sovereign FCRs. The Bank’s Financial Strength Rating (FSR) is maintained at ‘BBB-’, on a ‘Stable’ Outlook.

Abdul Halim al-Attar, 33, fled the war in Syria more than three years ago, moving first to Egypt and then to Lebanon. His wife returned to their home country just months after their departure, but Mr al-Attar resisted; he didn't want to go back to a place where he saw no future for their children, a nine-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. Day after day, Mr al-Attar relied on selling pens and other small items to support his family. At the time, Mr al-Attar was receiving the equivalent of $US36 ($50) a month from the UN Refugee Agency and supplementing that with painstaking sales - enough for a rundown apartment and the bare necessities, but not to send his son to school. An Indiegogo campaign raised $US188,685 for Mr al-Attar.

International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Al Baraka Bank are cooperating to expand the availability of trade finance for Egyptian importers to help spur economic growth and create jobs. Under this agreement, Al Baraka Bank becomes the third Egyptian bank, and the first Islamic bank in the country, to join IFC's Global Trade Finance Programme (GTFP). IFC guarantees will help Al Baraka Bank clients import commodities that are critical to the local market, including raw materials, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers and spare parts that will support different manufacturing sectors. In fiscal 2015, IFC's GTFP committed over $1 billion in the Middle East and North Africa region and over $6 billion around the world.

Lunch menu during the Arab Forum for Environment and Development’s conference on sustainable consumption constituted entirely of local organic food. Moreover, this was the first conference in the Arab region where “recycled” food was served: intact remains of Mediterranean fish served on day one were used to make a delicious fish-filet plate on day two. In addition, no plastic bottles were used during the two day conference, which were replaced by re-usable glass bottles. Within the same context, and in cooperation with AFED, the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM) organized a session during the conference on the Mediterranean diet as part of sustainable food systems.

The Middle East and North Africa region recorded strong growth in the Sukuk market in the first 10 months of 2015, according to Michele Leung, Director, Fixed Income Indices, S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The market value, as tracked by the S&P MENA Sukuk Index, rose 14 % YTD to 37 billion, compared with the mere 1 % growth in the conventional bond market in the region. The Sukuk market has expanded 37 % since the S&P MENA Sukuk Index’s inception in July 2013. United Arab Emirates is the most active issuing country in the region, and it remains dominant in terms of country exposure at 52 %, followed by Saudi Arabia at 17 %.
Overall, governments have continued to diversify their funding platforms, and the global Sukuk market has witnessed solid support from the lack of primary supply. Looking at the indices’ total return performance, there has been a 1.1 - 1.3 % decline in both Sukuk and bond markets month-to-date. As of Nov 18, 2015, the S&P MENA Sukuk Index rose 1.05 % YTD, while the S&P MENA Bond Index outperformed and gained 1.90 % in the same period.

Bold new ideas for helping Syrian refugees and their overburdened Middle Eastern host countries are gaining traction among international donors, shocked into action by this year's migration of hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrians to Europe.
Rather than struggling to gather humanitarian aid for refugees, the plans center around investing billions of dollars, much of it to be raised on financial markets. The money would go for development in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon to improve lives for both their own populations and refugees.
More controversial is a demand by some in the aid community that, in return for such a "Mideast Marshall Plan," Jordan and Lebanon must allow Syrian refugees to work, integrating them more into society. The host countries, however, point to high domestic unemployment in arguing they cannot put large numbers of refugees to work legally.
"We need to be ambitious," the regional chief of the World Bank, Ferid Belhaj, told The Associated Press. "Development is the key."

More than one-third of small and medium enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa are out of the purview of banking sector and there exists a funding gap of up to $13bn for SME Islamic financing in the region.
Moreover sukuk, or Islamic bonds, have gained real momentum with many non-Muslim countries raising funds through these instruments, said Malaysian Premier Dato Sri Mohamad Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak at the 11th World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF), which got underway here yesterday and attended by more than 3,000 delegates from 98 countries.
“35% of SMEs in the Mena are excluded from the formal banking sector. Indeed, there is a financing gap of up to $13bn for SME Islamic financing in this region,” Razak said, quoting a study by International Finance Corp (IFC).

The early aughts were a dusty time in Amman, Jordan. Fueled both by optimistic real estate developers hoping to replicate the economic success of Dubai, and by an influx of Iraqi refugees across all levels of the economic spectrum, property prices and construction spiked. After 2008's financial crisis, though, much of that construction halted. Last year, Studio-X's Amman lab—the Jordanian outpost of Columbia University's worldwide network of architecture and urban planning research labs—set out to catalogue these abandoned buildings. Their developers are still waiting for enough money to complete them.

The catalog of 6,500 numismatic pieces – coins, glass weights, dies, medals, etc. - is the third major catalog of Islamic numismatic material held in the Egyptian National Library, formerly the Khedivial Library. The catalog differs from its predecessors in a number of ways. First, it is a new catalog in that inscriptions had to be read from the digital images which were taken under difficult and rushed conditions and not from the actual objects. Second, inscriptions in Arabic are included in this electronic catalog. Inscriptions in European languages and references are the work of Dr. Norman D. Nicol from the 1982 catalog of the collection.

Financial inclusion is one of many the areas that caught the new public authorities’ attention in Tunisia. A decree-law was passed in November 2011 that authorized the establishment of credit institutions dedicated to low-income people. It also created a modern regulatory agency, the microfinance supervisory authority. Beyond micro-lending, the Ministry of Finance now aims at modernizing the entire financial sector in Tunisia by 2020. Such a plan is timely and provides hope for further financial deepening. In this regard, a recent snapshot on financial inclusion completed by CGAP and the World Bank provides insights.

From Takaful Emarat’s perspective, a number of factors in the Mena region have contributed to a relatively weak culture of financial planning and saving among our citizens and expatriate populations. However, education programmes addressing the importance of financial planning in the region are required to highlight the need for both citizens and expatriates to plan and save in order to generate income post-retirement, provide for family education and ensure comprehensive life and health cover is in place, for example. This situation is changing with the growing popularity of takaful as a means to plan for unexpected financial or medical emergencies.

L’université Paris Dauphine lance, en collaboration avec le cabinet Fidaroc Grant Thornton, l’Executive Master principes et pratiques de la finance islamique au Maroc, à Casablanca. L'occasion aussi de faire le point sur les perspectives de la finance islamique au Maroc et dans le monde. Le choix du Maroc pour lancer cette formation n’est pas dû au hasard. Au contraire, il traduit les atouts et les perspectives de développement de la finance islamique au Maroc. Faïçal Mekouar, président de Fidaroc Grant Thornton a par contre rappelé le niveau non satisfaisant de la bancarisation au Maroc.

Islamic lenders will find it difficult to compete in Lebanon's banking sector without regulatory amendments to support growth of the Islamic banking industry, Mutasim Mahmassani , the general manager of Al Baraka Bank Lebanon said. He said that the market share of Islamic banking assets in the overall banking industry in Lebanon remains below 1%. Al Baraka Bank Lebanon , a subsidiary of Al Baraka Banking Group, expects its profits to grow by 7-8% this year to nearly USD 1 million, he added. The official said that lack of awareness of Islamic banking options in Lebanon was also a major obstacle to growth, adding that murabaha is the most popular tool of Islamic finance in Lebanon.

Queen Noor of Jordan, the founder and chairperson of the King Hussein Foundation (KHF), recently announced the launch of Ethmar, a microfinance institution (MFI) that is compliant with Shariah. Queen Noor expressed the vision of Ethmar becoming an innovative model for economic empowerment similar to the other pioneering programs launched by the King Hussein Foundation. As of 2015, the foundation operates programs including the Jubilee Institute; the Information and Research Center; the National Center for Culture and Performing Arts and the National Music Conservatory.

Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt is offering the country's central bank three proposals to activate the mortgage finance initiative for the low and medium-class incomes. Mahmoud Idris - Faisal Bank's Product Manager for Mortgage Unit - said that one of the three proposals offered by the bank to the CBE is to raise premiums of the housing unit gradually every year. The second suggestion is to elongate the funding period from 20 to 25 years. Idris stated that the third proposal is to launch a national campaign by the CBE in coordination with banks to raise citizens' awareness about the importance of the initiative and the necessary steps to participate in it.

Le patron de CIH Bank Ahmed Rahhou a annoncé vouloir se placer sur le créneau de la finance participative. Les banques ont jusqu’à la mi-novembre pour déposer leur demande d’agrément auprès de Bank al Maghrib. Le dossier de CIH Bank est en train d’être finalisé. Le PDG a précisé que cette activité, si elle obtient l’autorisation de la banque centrale, serait menée en partenariat avec une autre banque, sans en préciser le nom. Pour le moment, la BCP et la BMCE ont aussi fait part de leur volonté de se lancer dans le secteur. Des banques étrangères souhaiteraient aussi investir. En ce qui concerne les chiffres du premier semestre 2015 publiés le 21 septembre, la direction de la CIH Bank s’en dit satisfaite.

Egypt's Wethaq Takaful Insurance is to launch its first real estate fund during upcoming general assembly scheduled for next November, head of financial and administration affairs Abdel El Aziz Labib said. Wethaq will present 50 million Egyptian pounds (US$6.4 million) as an initial capital for the new fund. The Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) has granted initial approval for the fund. Wethaq intends to raise the capital of its fund to 250 million pounds within few years after inception, a step toward a plan to launch another fund. Furthermore, Labib said Wethaq's talks with the Egyptian regulator had also included a proposal to establish a new subsidiary to manage the new fund. The new subsidiary shall be 20% owned by Wethaq Egypt, he added.

Le gouverneur de Bank Al Maghrib, Abdellatif Jouahri, a assuré que le Comité des établissements de crédit a reçu plusieurs demandes d'agréments de la part d'institutions étrangères pour l'implantation de banques participatives au Maroc. Pour la plupart, il s'agit de banques du Qatar, d'Arabie Saoudite, du Bahrëin et du Koweit, qui veulent collaborer avec des banques de la place, pour certaines, et s'implanter au Maroc, pour d'autres. Toutes les demandes seront traitées selon des critères spécifiques, comme la capacité à réaliser un bon rendement. D'autres banques internationales ont également manifesté leur intérêt pour le Maroc, notamment HSBC, qui a déjà reçu une autorisation pour ouvrir ses portes au royaume.