Pakistan ready to champion Islamic finance growth: SECP Head

April 27, 2024 (MLN): Pakistan now stands ready to play its pivotal role in fostering an enabling environment for Islamic finance, one that encourages innovation, promotes investor confidence, and ensures the integrity and stability of our financial system, Tariq Naseem, Head of Islamic Finance at SECP stated yesterday.

According to a press release issued yesterday, he made these remarks during the closing of the three-day capacity-building workshop jointly organized by the SECP and IFSB on Islamic Capital Markets.

He further shared a comprehensive roadmap for capacity building in Islamic finance has been developed in partnership with IFSB Malaysia, AAOIFI Bahrain, and IsDBI Jeddah, the CIEF Alliance for Islamic Finance.

The workshop, specially designed to enhance the capacity of officials of regulatory and supervisory authorities, was well attended by officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, the State Bank of Pakistan, the Ministry of Finance, the CCP, PSX, PMEX, CDC, and NCCPL.

Speaking at the event, Akif Saeed, Chairman SECP, reiterated its deep commitment to support the continued development and expansion of the Islamic finance industry in Pakistan.

Referring to the historic judgment of the Federal Shariat Court and government’s commitment to transform the entire financial system in accordance with Shariah principles, he pointed out that SECP has already accelerated its efforts and achieved considerable progress by enabling Islamic finance in all regulated sectors.

The SECP has revamped the Shariah governance framework and also issued Guidelines for Offering Islamic Financial Services that are enabling industry to achieve many firsts during the year.

These include Shariah certification of the first ever Shariah-compliant REIT schemes, dedicated asset management companies, Islamic income, money market, and equity funds, Islamic pension schemes, Islamic ETFs, an NBFC with buy-now pay-later platform, a stock brokerage house, and a microfinance company.

The regular issuance and listing of GoP Ijarah Sukuk through the stock market is another major breakthrough in the domestic Sukuk market achieved during the year.

In addition, the corporate sukuk market in Pakistan is also witnessing renewed interest; however, it is dominated by short-term, privately placed sukuks, and during the year, the SECP approved 30 such sukuks worth Rs153 billion (Total: 69 Sukuk, with a cumulative amount of Rs563.640bn as of June 30, 2023).

He, however, emphasized that, there is a need to enable the listing of short-term Sukuk as well, so as to expand the investor universe for the issuer as well as the investable universe for the investor.

In his closing remarks and vote of thanks, Tariq Naseem, Head of Islamic Finance at SECP, expressed gratitude to IFSB and the esteemed trainers for their support in promoting Islamic finance.

Copyright Mettis Link News