01.05.2012, Jeddah, KSA - The Islamic Development Bank Group on Monday hosted an international conference on Islamic Microfinance aimed at promoting financial inclusion and creating business opportunities.
Chairing the conference, IDB Vice-President (Operations) Boubacar Sidibe, stated that IDB will actively follow up the mandate to expand the Islamic microfinance industry and offered to support innovation and research in the field as a means to fighting poverty in IDB member countries. He touched upon cooperation for capacity building as a must amongst financiers, microfinance institutions and professionals urging them to create a knowledge platform accessible to everyone. “We shall attempt to
achieve the two goals of financial inclusiveness and capacity building so that users could benefit from the job market and thus be part of the economic mainstream”, he added.
Sudan’s State Minister for Human Resource Development, Mrs. Hiba Mahmoud Sadig Farid was among the panelists who expressed her country’s readiness to share its practical experience in the field as a successful model.
The one day event mainly focused on the challenges ahead of Islamic microfinance namely; standardization, lowering the costs, documenting best practices, better use of technology, as well as trust worthiness scoring, training and capacity building and facilitating the ways for legal, regulatory and supervisory issues. The conference revealed that in the wake of an increasing demand for Shariah-compliant financial products, Islamic microfinance provides tremendous opportunity to tap its potential
through partnering and risk sharing as an alternative means to the current method of only lending money. It underscored the significance of access to finance for poor households in the informal economy in order to improve welfare to the household level in terms of providing basic services such as water, sanitation and health care, etc., in addition to financial services.
The participants agreed to work in unison to better understand the needs in the light of the Shari’ah- compliant services and engage in networking and extensive cooperation to remove impediments to the progress of Islamic microfinance.
The conference was attended by senior officials from IDB Group entities, Islamic microfinance practitioners and experts from IDB member countries including Sudan, Jordan, Morocco, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine and Guinea, as well as representatives from different development finance institutions and donor entities such as Agence Francaise de Development (AFD) and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).