VP: Islamic Finance Has Special Features

JAKARTA - Vice President, Boediono assess Islamic finance has special advantages compared to conventional finance. He said this has become its own guidelines in the Islamic finance operations and make it survive the disastrous economic crisis in 2008 and 2009.

Sharia''has a special sign of the financial activities of the sector rill,''he said in the opening of the Joint High Level Conference of Islamic Finance, on Monday (18 / 7). In addition, he said, the financial system also reduces the risk of decupling between risk and reward.

He said, this advantage must be maintained. He asserted, it must be maintained despite the trend of convergence between Islamic and conventional finance.

Global Islamic financial system grew rapidly to more than 20 percent since 2000. Although starting from a small degree, ie one percent of total global financial assets, financial predicted this in 2012 will reach 1600 billion U.S. dollars.

In the report the IDB-IFSB, globally there are 500 Islamic financial institutions that demonstrate the rapid increase in assets, of 639 billion U.S. dollars in 2008 to 822 billion in 2009 or about 29 percent. For comparison, in the same period, the growth of a thousand top of conventional banks is only about six to seven percent.

For sukuk, issuance of these financial instruments globally reached 50 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, with Malaysia's foremost publisher of 33 billion U.S. dollars. Indonesia had just succeeded in issuing sukuk about 3 billion U.S. dollars.

Meanwhile, similar advantages are also recognized the Governor of Bank Indonesia, Nasution. When found in the same place, he said the economic slowdown in some countries like the U.S. and Europe will inevitably be an effect on Indonesia, including Islamic finance. ''But because more directed to small and medium enterprises, this may not be a big impact,''he explained.

Islamic banking in Indonesia, within the last 10 years has managed to increase assets to 56-fold. An increase in assets of Rp 1.79 in 2000 to Rp 100.2 trillion at the end of 2010.

Recorded an impressive growth rate of 50.58 percent per year. Throughout 2010, the Islamic banking business grew by a very high volume that is equal to 46.98 percent.

As of April 2011, the central bank noted there are 11 Islamic banks (BUS), 23 units of sharia (UUS) and 153 people of Islamic bank financing (SRB) and the 1884 Islamic service office network. Islamic banking ATM networks supported six thousand and seven thousand ATM Bersama Prima.

Reference: REPUBLIKA[CO][ID]