The next phase of growth of the Islamic capital market (ICM) will be characterised by greater internationalisation which entails, among others, a growing number of product issuers and service providers expanding beyond their home market, more investors seeking products or instruments with international exposure, as well as greater diversity in terms of currencies used in issuing Shariah-compliant instruments,” according to Zainal Izlan Zainal Abidin, Executive Director, Islamic Capital Market at the SC.
Zainal Izlan was addressing some 41 delegates from Malaysia and several emerging countries comprising market practitioners, regulators and academics, who were participating in the 7th Annual Islamic Markets Programme (IMP) which was at the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) in Kuala Lumpur as part of the Malaysian Government’s initiatives to promote and widen the skills set of ICM regulators and practitioners especially in emerging capital markets.
IMP comes under the Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme, through which Malaysia shares its development experiences and expertise with other developing countries.
This year’s theme was “Building the Environment for the Growth of Islamic Finance”.
The four-day course spanned several topics and speakers in the Programme included senior industry practitioners Rafe Haneef, Managing Director of HSBC Amanah Malaysia; Rafiza Ghazali, Head of Islamic Finance, Asia, of Thomson Reuters; prominent academician Professor Dr. Syed Othman Alhabshi, Chief Academic Officer of INCEIF; and Ijlal Ahmed Alvi, CEO of International Islamic Financial market (IIFM).
First organised in 2006, the IMP, according to a statement from the SC, has hosted 289 participants from various regions around the world including the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, South East Asia, which reflects the global reach, diversity and acceptance of Islamic finance today.
Zainal Izlan, welcoming participants to the Programme, stressed that the Islamic finance industry is presently at a crucial stage and it needs to redefine and establish the enabling environment that will spur its next phase of growth. The industry, he added, has developed into an industry with global appeal, marked by a 15 per cent average annual growth rate over the past decade, to reach $1.3 trillion today.
Malaysia’s Islamic capital market, he continued, is expected to grow at an average rate of 10.6 percent per annum, over the 10-Year period to 2020, according to the Capital Market Masterplan 2 (CMP2). “Islamic finance has developed not only in traditional Muslim markets like Malaysia and the Middle East, but also in conventional markets and financial centres such as the UK, with a growing number of jurisdictions across the globe at various stages of developing their capabilities in Islamic finance,” he said.