Provincial Minister for Finance Dr Ayesha Ghous Pasha has said that Islamic banking has gained enormous international attention since a number of decades due to its large growth and resilience to financial crises as well as the nature of Sharia-compliant finance models that focus on the principles of investment in real assets and risk-sharing.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has endorsed the principles of Islamic finance by saying that Islamic finance can help to promote macroeconomic and financial stability. Its principles of risk-sharing and asset-based financing will promote better risk management by both financial institutions and their customers, as well as discourage credit booms.
She expressed these views while addressing the 5th Global forum on Islamic finance by COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Lahore. She said that as a fast-growing emerging market and a major economy within the countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Pakistan has a mature financial industry that, in the recent past, has been focusing on broadening the Sharia-compliant sector in a country with more than 190 million people.
She also said that Islamic finance is expected to take off in Pakistan in coming years due to new regulations on Sharia-compliant banking, new industry-supporting regulatory bodies, as well as rising demand from foreign investors. Pakistan's Islamic banking industry has been growing at over 30 per cent per annum over the past five years, which is above the average global rate. If this trend continues, it can be expected that by 2018 Islamic banking assets in the country would be worth $17.6 billion.
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