Indonesia, Malaysia mull to establish World Sharia stock market center

Executives of Indonesian and Malaysian stock markets signed on Tuesday a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) document on the establishment of a World Sharia Stock Market Center, aimed at spurring growth potential of Sharia financial market particularly in stock market.

Signing of the document was conducted by Indonesia Stock Exchange President Director Tito Sulistio and his Malaysian counterpart Tajuddin Bin Atan on the first day of 12th World Islamic Economic Forum (WIFE) held in Indonesia's capital landmark convention center of JCC.

"Through the cooperation, we expect Indonesian and Malaysian stock markets would continue their joint efforts in developing Sharia portfolio instruments and Sharia products in stock market which would eventually become the references in global level," Tito said on the sidelines of the signing ceremony.

Besides serving as the center to develop Sharia products and portfolios for stock markets, the planned World Sharia Stock Market Center would also serve as a research and development center to create micro market structure for global Sharia stock market.

"Besides that, we also planned to make the center the place to train human resources working in Sharia stock markets to become competent, professional and skillful persons in the industry and becoming the ultimate gate to issue Sharia portfolios for global market,"Tito added.

In 2014, global Sharia financial market was estimated to have 1.81 trillion U.S. dollars of assets or 9.69 percent higher than that of a year earlier that stood at 1.65 trillion U.S. dollars, according to a report compiled by State of the Global Islamic Economy published in 2015.

Of that 2014 figure, 295 billion U.S. dollars was the outstanding value of Islamic bonds that saw 6 percent growth annually.

Global Sharia financial market was estimated to expand to 3.24 trillion U.S. dollars by 2020. Endit