Plan ready to promote Islamic finance: Dar

The government has a “strategic plan” to promote Islamic finance, but banks and other financial institutions should not exploit the situation in the name of “Sharia compliance”. “We have a financial inclusion strategy that covers all the components needed to create Islamic financing, but the price has to be fair and competitive so that the first target of having Islamic finance products to raise funds can be achieved,” Senator Dar said in his speech at the country’s first international conference on Islamic capital markets on Monday. The conference was organised jointly by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). The theme of the one-day conference was “ICM development with ecosystem completion: innovation, growth, and transformation”. Ishaq Dar lauded the success of Islamic finance in several countries, including non-Muslim ones, but lamented that financial institutions were making Sharia-based products costly in this country.