RIYADH: The Global Forum of Islamic Economics and Finance (GFIEF), scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur end-May this year, will be a platform for Malaysia to recapture its positioning as a leading innovator in Islamic finance, according to Treasury secretary-general Datuk Johan Mahmood Merican.

He said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim believes that the country’s Islamic finance industry has reached maturity and is stable enough to start developing its own Islamic finance/banking products and to leverage its expertise with other Islamic countries.

"In 1990 Malaysia was also driving the development of Islamic finance but the approach then was to take products from the conventional financial system and try to make them shariah-compliant.

"So we just copied the products. But now the Prime Minister feels that it is enough. Our industry has become mature and stable, and with new challenges such as technological sophistication, he now wants us to develop our own Islamic products.

"This will obviously take into consideration Islamic principles and seek to enable fairer risk sharing and harness concepts like zakat and waqf for social finance,” he told Bernama on the sidelines of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) annual meeting which today entered its last day.

According to Johan, these matters will be studied for Malaysia and IsDB to work on together, and there will the discussions in Riyadh will be followed up during the forum next month.

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Ministry of Finance will organise GFIEF at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre from May 28-29, 2024.

Themed "Shaping a Resilient Global Islamic Economy through Values-based Reforms”, GFIEF will gather policymakers, business leaders, and financial service providers from around the world to engage in discussion and collaborate to build a future where Islamic economics and finance can play a pivotal role in fostering shared prosperity and equity.

According to the secretary-general, Anwar is also inviting some of the ministers who have attended the IsDB event here to come to Malaysia next month.

"As part of his discussion with Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati yesterday, Anwar has also extended her Malaysia’s invitation to the upcoming event,” he said.

The Prime Minister, via a post on his Facebook page yesterday, shared that Sri Mulyani would be coming to Malaysia next month to attend GFIEF.

They also discussed areas of economic cooperation to be strengthened at the ASEAN level, taking into account Malaysia’s role as ASEAN chair next year. - Bernama