Major breakthrough sought to propel sharia banking industry

In #Indonesia the Islamic banks’ market share has remained below 5% for the last several years, despite having existed since the 1990s. Now the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry is mulling a proposal to allow Islamic lender subsidiaries owned by the four state-run banks to be merged into two new entities. The ministry’s assistant Gatot Trihargo said the state would still control the two new sharia lenders as majority shareholders. He added that at least two of the four sharia banks should be merged in order to become a BUKU III lender, which has capital between Rp 5 trillion and Rp 30 trillion. Bank Aceh, a regional development bank, is currently in the process of being converted into an Islamic lender, while Bank Syariah Mandiri is seeking strategic investors from the Middle East.