Strict discipline maintained in liquidity market

ISLAMABAD: Due to strict fiscal and monetary discipline maintained in the local liquidity market, the remittances have registered positive growth and expected to reach $12 billion by the end of current financial year.

This was stated by the governor State Bank of Pakistan, Yasin Anwar while addressing the inaugural session of the two-day, 2nd International Conference on Islamic Business: Managing Shariah Conforming Business Prospects, Practices and Personal here at National Institute of Banking and Finance (NIBF) on Tuesday.

He said that there is great potential for Islamic banking and finance and his organization is extending every effort for promotion of the sector.

The governor SBP informed that the Islamic banking sector was rapidly growing at an average of 30 percent per annum and its out reach was expanding and branch network has also reached 886 across the country.

The sector is facing many challenges and it requires to further improve the system for expanding its outreach from the big cities to rural areas to introduce Islamic banking system as against the conventional system, he added.

Yasin Anwar said that SBP would provide proper guidelines for establishing more Islamic banks and micro-financing and would organize capacity building programmes including mass awareness programmes.

Speaking on the occasion, Senator Khursheed Ahmad informed that global economic recession has dominated the world's economy and created an economic crisis.

The crisis, he said badly affected the economies of euro-zone including Ireland, Spain, Italy and others, which was showing the failure of capitalism.

The Western capitalism system has dispossessed 2 million households in the US and unemployment rate in the youth reached 24 percent, whereas it has provided $3 trillion for its institutions as a bailout package.

Khursheed Ahmad said that the world was looking for an alternative economic system, adding that the Islamic banking and finance system has a complete solution to the problem faced by global economies.

Addressing the conference, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim urged the need for keeping transparency, accountability and setting moral standards for economic uplift.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2012