IslamicFinance.de

Dr Muhammad Amjad Saqib, the founder of the Islamic micro finance company, Akhuwat, met with Alan Hatfield, executive director for strategy and development at ACCA London headquarters. In Pakistan, micro finance is proving popular amongst the growing SME sector. The country’s SME development authority calculates that nearly 90% of companies are SMEs, most of them operating in the informal sector, so the demand for micro finance is also growing. Akhuwat has opened over 850 branches in 486 cities/towns across Pakistan, enabling over 3.5 Million families to become self-reliant by extending interest-free loans worth more than £400 million. Dr Saqib's latest initiative is called Akhuwat University, which will provide higher education without any tuition fee to support the upward social mobility in the country.

Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance in Dubai interviewed Pakistan-based Akhuwat, a microfinance program that has given loans to over 1 million people, without charging interest. Akhuwat-founder Dr. Muhammad Amjad Saqib explained that they rely on 4 core principles: giving up interest, volunteerism, localization, and empowerment. Akhuwat started a decade ago with a $100 loan, and until now has dispersed $30 million. 99.8% of the loans were paid back in full. Dr. Saqib said that financial institutions began their activities on the basis of doubt, but they started their activities on the basis of trust.

The seminar titled "Islamic Microfinance - Approaches & Practices: A Case Study of Akhuwat" was held in Pakistan last Wednesday. Various initiatives of Islamic microfinance in Pakistan, their philosophies and methodologies were highlighted in the seminar and the case of Akhuwat Foundation was discussed as a case study. It was also observed that Islamic microfinance was still in its evolution, and speakers therefore gave recommendations for further growth and strengthening the operations of Islamic microfinance institutions.

During the last ten years, Pakistan-based Akhuwat, the world’s first completely interest-free microfinance program, has disbursed $30 million to over 1 million people, without charging any interest. The company now has more than 1,000 regular employees and offices in 105 cities of Pakistan across the country. Their mission is to challenge the interest based system and challenge Islamic finance to evolve out of its current complacency with interest-mimicking products towards products based on the foundational principles of equity, sharing, and gifting and therfore fight poverty.

Hansonwade’s Summit on scalable business models for Islamic Microfinance will take place from January 30 to February 1, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey.

The focal point of the summit will be on identifying the potential business models available and their challenges. At the summit Tijara, USAID, Akhuwat, Al-Amal Microfinance Bank, Tanzania eco-Volunteerism and CWCD will share their projects.

Event Website:
http://islamicmicrofinance-summit.com/

AlHuda Centre of Islamic Banking & Economics (CIBE) and AKHUWAT from Pakistan will be the hosts of World’s Largest Conference on Islamic Microfinance. The conference will be held on June 13, 2011 at Faisal Auditorium Islamabad and delegates from 12 countries and 800 participants will attend this event.
Through this event light will be shed on topics like methodology of poverty reduction, Zakat, Shariah implications, Dard-e-Hasna, Waqf models, latest trends of islamic microfinance, technological application of poverty alleviation, usage of islamic microfinance in non muslim societies and other issues.