IslamicFinance.de

It is anticipated that the South African taxation legislation governing the specific elements around Murabaha and Sukuk will be extended to cover listed companies, effective in January.
The government has followed through on their intention of ensuring Islamic financial arrangements accessibility to “other” entities (over and above just sovereign government itself and state-owned entities) to also allow for an alternate additional source to raise capital.
Over the last few years, the government has introduced Islamic compliant financial structures in stages. With the first of such introductions coming through in the Taxation Laws Amendment Act of 2010 – “the Act” that recognised for the first time arrangements like Diminishing Musharaka, Murabaha and Mudaraba as alternates to their conventional counterparts – these amendments were effected to enable banks to offer a Shari’ah compliant product.
In 2011 further amendments to the same act were effected, wherein Sukuk was introduced. However, issuance was limited to the sovereign government. Later on, effective from April 2015, Sukuk issuance was extended to state-owned entities.

Organised by the International Centre of Islamic Economy and the Dubai Airport Freezone Authority, the event is part of efforts to encourage innovation and creativity in the development of new products as key additions to the international Islamic economy. The two-day event will be held in conjunction with UAE Innovation Week which was launched by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, in line with of the directives of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, upon declaring 2015 as the ‘Year of Innovation’. The international platform is poised to attract more than 300 participants including top-notch financial and economic experts, decision makers and representatives from official, supervisory, regulatory, legislative and executive entities to share the latest innovative ideas related to Islamic economic sectors.

The value of real estate deals declined since mid of October 2015 until the middle of the current month by 24 per cent to SAR29.6 billon compared with the same period last year, recent data shows.
According to data issued by the Saudi Ministry of Justice, real estate deals divided between residential and commercial, witnessed a fall in residential deals by 36 % to reach SAR18.6bn, while commercial deals rose by 8 % to SAR11bn.
Real estate land deals accounted for 89 % of the total at SAR26.3bn, reports Al Riyadh Newspaper.
Riyadh was the most active city in terms of residential real estate deals with a value of SAR 6.2bn, down by 28 % YoY, followed by Jeddah with SAR3.7bn, down by 13 %. In terms of commercial deals, Riyadh came in first place with SAR4.9bn and a rise of 18 %.

Global real estate consultancy firm CBRE says that both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have pumped $5.24 billion and $4.54bn respectively as foreign direct investment in global real estate.
CBRE’s latest report shows that the global real estate markets attracted investments worth more than $407bn during the first half of 2015, the highest since 2007. This represents an increase of 14 per cent from the same period of the year’s performance in 2014.
Although the pace of growth has accelerated over the past years, the rate of growth slowed in the first half of 2015 and a great variation can be observed in growth at the regional and international levels, reports Qatar-based Al-Sharq.
Despite the fall in oil prices, the buyers from the Middle East have maintained their high investment activity and, overall, pumped $11.5bn into foreign markets during the first half of 2015.
Nick Maclean, managing director, CBRE Middle East says: “Data from H1 2015 shows a continuing acceleration in the flow of capital out of the Middle East region by private offices and high-net-worth-individuals.”

Banks in the United Arab Emirates are working together to try to stem the number of small business owners fleeing the country with unpaid debt, a trend that has already reached around 5 billion dirhams ($1.4 bln) this year, a senior banking official said. Small and medium-sized enterprises have come under pressure in recent months amid a gradual drying up of liquidity in the banking system due to the weak oil price and slowing economic growth. As a result, some business people have chosen to "skip" the country, leaving behind unpaid debt, a situation that bankers say has grown significantly from last year, although they did not provide precise figures. In a country where under existing legislation, a bounced cheque risks landing the issuer in jail, many of those absconding fear the consequences if they stay. "We want to take coordinated action on risk management," UAE Banks Federation chairman Abdul Aziz al-Ghurair told reporters on the sidelines of a banking conference

Prime Minister Najib Razak’s plan to revive Malaysia’s faltering economy is getting no help from the country’s Islamic bond market.
Yields on government 10-year sukuk, used by companies to gauge the cost of Shariah-compliant financing, are at their highest level in 18 months relative to two-year securities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. And with the slide in Brent crude prices sapping Malaysia’s oil-export revenue against a backdrop of looming U.S. interest-rate increases, investors say longer-term borrowing won’t be getting cheaper anytime soon.
“With the U.S. expected to raise interest rates soon, Malaysia’s yield curve will remain steep next year,” said Elsie Tham, a senior fund manager at Kuala Lumpur-based Manulife Asset Management Services Bhd who oversees more than US$1 billion. “Companies will find it challenging to raise funds because of slower economic growth.”

It’s simple. No interest on investments but the lender and borrower share the returns.
This form of financing, known as Islamic finance, confronts the lifelong convention in finance of receiving interest on a loan.
The global financial system depends on the founding concept that money itself is a commodity that needs not be invested into an underlying commodity to have value. That said, money can be leveraged to create greater returns through the application of derivatives. Critics artfully label these leveraged and speculative winning, or more euphemistically, returns making money out of nothing. This can ultimately have catastrophic results.
Islamic finance theoretically eliminates the speculative nature of conventional finance. In prohibiting the “unjustified enrichment” and “speculation or excessive risk,” Islamic scholars pushed three principles:
Prohibition of interest.
Profit and loss sharing (riba).
No speculation (gharar).

The launch of MyETF-AGRI, the firm’s second Islamic ETF issued this year, brings the number of Shari’ah compliant ETFs in Malaysia to four and 18 in total in the world.
The global ETF market has closed in on the $3 trillion mark with Shari’ah-compliant ETFs only registering about $320 million of that total. In Malaysia, Shari’ah-compliant ETFs make up of over 30 % of the ETF market.
Malaysia does lead the pack, however, with the most Shari’ah-compliant ETF products in the world. Malaysia’s four Shari’ah-compliant ETFs account for some $75 million or 23 % of the global Shari’ah-Compliant ETF segment.
The launch of this landmark Fund represents many firsts for the industry including being the first agricultural-related Islamic ETF globally and the first sectoral Islamic ETF in the region while reinforcing Malaysia’s position as the global hub for Islamic finance and investment products.
MyETF-AGRI will look to invest in the 30 constituent companies that make up the Thomson Reuters Asia Pacific ex-Japan Islamic Agribusiness Index and in substantially the same weightings as they appear on the benchmark index.

Rapid growth in Islamic finance in recent years is pushing up demand for more experts in the field, with the Financial Accreditation Agency (FAA) identifying five key areas in which specialists are urgently needed.
However, programmes offered by local universities now are too generic and provide only a broad-based education on Islamic finance, noted FAA chief executive Dr Amat Taap Mashor in an interview with The Edge Financial Daily.
The industry and its future growth, at the very least, require experts that are specialised in compliance, risk management, governance, audit and the syariah principles guiding all these areas of expertise, he said.
“What is needed now are specialised areas of studies. Currently, if someone wants to specialise in risk management for Islamic finance, the [local] universities might offer only one class on risk management. How is the student supposed to develop the depth of knowledge needed [in] Islamic finance?
“Without a depth of knowledge in syariah principles, how can you design a syariah-compliant product?” asked Amat.

Kazakhstan's parliament has approved legislative amendments to facilitate Islamic finance, paving the way for Central Asia's largest economy to issue its first sovereign sukuk next year, a government official said.
The amendments, which still require the president's signature, would also allow for the conversion of conventional banks into Islamic ones, said Yerlan Baidaulet, an adviser to the Investments and Development Ministry.
"We expect the sovereign sukuk in early spring of next year. Probably in March, it depends on the decision of the Ministry of Finance as it has its own budgetary process," Baidaulet said on the sidelines of an industry conference in Kuwait.
The legal amendments to the banking services and securities laws are the latest steps by the majority Muslim state to help develop Islamic finance. A dedicated Islamic banking law is also currently in preparation, Baidaulet said.

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."

Institute of Business Administration (IBA) announced the establishment of the Centre for Excellence in Islamic Finance at IBA. IBA has launched IBA-CEIF in collaboration with Meezan Bank and Dr Ishrat Hussain will be Chairman CEIF, while Irfan Siddiqui, CEO Meezan Bank Ltd, Hassan Bilgrami CEO BankIslami Ltd, Shafqaat Ahmed CEO Al Barkah Bank Ltd, Junaid Ahmed CEO Dubai Islamic Bank, Dr Imran Usmani, Shari'ah Advsior Meezan Bank Ltd, Samar Hasnain Executive Director, Development Finance Group State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and Ahmed Ali Siddiqui, Founding Director of CEIF, are founding members of Board of Management (BoM).

Talking to newsmen here on Friday at IBA city campus, Dr Ishrat Hussain, Chairman CEIF, said that the Center had been set-up with the objective to bridge the gap between trained human resource and industry's growing requirement. He hoped that IBA-CEIF will play a vital role for providing skilled and qualified workforce to the Islamic Banking Industry of Pakistan. On the occasion Ahmed Ali Siddiqui, Founding Director of CEIF and Dr Zeeshan was also present.

56 major Islamic bond issues in the global pipeline.
The Thomson Reuters Global Sukuk Index is at 117.67354 points, down from 118.24280 at the end of last month but up from 115.79726 at the end of last year. The Thomson Reuters Investment Grade Sukuk Index is at 115.75520 points against 116.64293 at end-October and 113.69014 at end-2014.

The ‘social contract’ is an idea that dates back to the ancient Greeks, and refers to the implicit agreement among members of a society that defines their relationship with each other and the state. That relationship holds the key to unravelling the puzzle of the ‘Arab Spring.’

To development economists, the uprisings that started in Tunisia and spread to several countries in the Arab world in 2010-11 came as somewhat of a surprise. For the previous decade, almost all the indicators of economic well-being were strong and improving. GDP growth was substantial, at about 5 percent a year. Extreme poverty (people living on $1.25 a day) was low and declining. Conventional measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, were lower than in other middle-income countries, and in some cases declining. In Egypt and Tunisia, the per-capita income of the bottom 40 percent was growing faster than the average. In terms of human development, the Middle East and North Africa region recorded the fastest decline in child mortality rates and the steepest increase in school attainment.

Turkish Islamic bank Kuveyt Turk has mandated six institutions for a sukuk with a value of up to $400 million with a maturity of 10 years, it said in a statement to the Istanbul stock exchange late on Thursday.
Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank, which is 62 percent owned by Kuwait Finance House, said it had mandated KFH Capital, Dubai Islamic Bank, HSBC, Noor Bank, QInvest and Emirates NBD as joint lead managers. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in September that seven banks had been picked to arrange a potential deal.

The inadequate availability of Sharia'a-compliant financial instruments is a challenge for the GCC Islamic banking industry, leading to excess liquidity and an uneven playing field for Islamic banks that might affect their growth, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
An IMF working paper released on Monday said liquidity management has been a long-standing concern in the Islamic finance industry as there is a general lack of Sharia'a-compliant instruments that can serve as high-quality short-term liquid assets.
'The inadequate availability of Sharia'a-compliant financial instruments seems to have forced Islamic banks to hold a significant amount of cash reserves, limiting the flexibility of the central bank's monetary operations with Islamic financial institutions. Therefore, a key challenge is to broaden the range of Sharia'a-compliant instruments and build liquid markets', the report said.

Bahrain-based urban development company Diyar Al Muharraq entered into a $32 million corporate agreement with Al Salam Bank-Bahrain Thursday.
The agreement will partially fund the company's Dragon City development and was signed by Diyar Al Muharraq Chairman Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat and Al Salam Bank-Bahrain Director and Group CEO Yousif Abdulla Taqi. The total price tag for the Dragon City development is $100 million.

“It is with great pride that I officiate this momentous occasion as this marks the beginning of a strong partnership that is set to produce rich rewards and collect significant milestones for a long time to come," Alkhayyat said. "With Dragon City set to start operating in full capacity before the end of the year, we are confident that our calculated and well-thought out decision will reap many benefits and look forward to reveling in the age of prosperity that will soon follow.”

Albaraka Turk Kat?l?m Bankas? (Albaraka Türk), has mandated seven banks to arrange a Basel III compliant Reg S tier two subordinated sukuk — only the second from Turkey and the first in sukuk format.
The roadshow for the bond starts on Friday, with meetings taking place in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD), the private sector arm of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB), in collaboration with Anfaal Capital agreed to establish a Saudi Arabia-focused venture capital fund.
The joint initiative aims to promote and foster the development of the domestic venture capital market in Saudi Arabia. The initiative leverages KAUST's expertise in new technologies, as well as the ICD SME Program's experience in the development and management of investment vehicles.

On a trip through a Gulf squeezed by low oil prices, the head of the International Monetary Fund repeatedly called on countries to cut back on subsidies, lower government spending and consider levying taxes. But implementing Christine Lagarde's suggestions is easier said than done in the oil-rich countries, even as crude prices have dropped by over 50 percent since last year. Generations have grown used to cradle-to-grave social programs, comfortable government jobs and tax-free living. While Gulf leaders, including those in Kuwait, have begun warning harder times may be ahead, some citizens remain opposed to any cuts.
"Almost every week we hear about Kuwait giving grants left, right and center to other nations that are in need of money. It's as if the government doesn't realize that we, in Kuwait, are also in need," said Abdulaziz Al-Adwani, a Kuwaiti school teacher. "It's not logical to start imposing a tax on citizens when the government can afford to give grants to this country and that country."