LONDON, 22 January 2006 — Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, is hosting a private dinner on Jan. 25 at Clarence House in London, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the largest trade and project financing institution in the Muslim world.
The dinner is an opportune occasion for the IDB guests and dignitaries to inform the prince and the heads of his charitable foundations about the core objectives, the work and progress of the IDB over the last three decades, and its contribution to poverty alleviation and sustainable development in its 56 member countries.
At the same time, the Prince’s Charities may inform the IDB guests of their work in the UK and cooperation with partners overseas. Engagement with youth, including Muslim youth, is one of the core aims of the Prince’s Charities, a group of 16 not-for-profit organizations of which the Prince of Wales is president, and 14 of which was founded personally by the prince.
These organizations are active across a broad range of areas including business, the environment, and traditional arts, and reflect the Prince of Wales’s long-term and innovative perspective, and seek to address areas of previously unmet need.
The Prince’s Trust and The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, for instance, exist to help young people to overcome their barriers and get their lives working; and to teach Arts and Crafts skills which have profound roots in all the major faith traditions, respectively. The school’s courses are centered on its visual Islamic and traditional arts programs and post-graduate degrees which are validated by the University of Wales.
The IDB is currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of its establishment as the multilateral development bank (MDB) of the Muslim countries. It started operations in Jeddah in July 1975 after the inaugural meeting of its board of governors.
The prime objective of the IDB is to foster social progress and economic development of member countries and of Muslim communities in non-member countries. This is done through three core policy aims, namely, contributing to poverty alleviation in member countries; promoting intra-Islamic trade and investment; and promoting the Islamic banking system both in member countries and globally. In this respect, total cumulative net financing of the IDB group reached $44.4 billion at end June 2005, mainly for development and infrastructure projects, trade finance operations, technical assistance and special assistance. In fiscal year 2004/2005 alone, the IDB approved $4.9 billion of financing, an increase of 27.8 percent on the previous year.
The MDB has in the last three decades pioneered 12 such modes of financing including equity participation, leasing, import and export financing, and more recently the issuance of Islamic bonds, certificates and notes.
As part of its social responsibility strategy, the IDB also finances projects and activities of Muslim communities worldwide, especially in the field of education, vocational training and human capital development through its special assistance program and through its stand-alone Waqf (Endowment) Fund.