DUBAI, 2 December 2007 — The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), a member of Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group, will officially launch operations on Jan.10, 2008.
The announcement was made at the fifth round of two-day ITFC’s board meeting in Dubai which ends today.
The meetings are attended Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, president of the IDB Group and chairman of ITFC Board; ITFC board members and Dr. Waleed Al-Wohaib, CEO of ITFC.
The meeting discussed a number of issues related to the operational setup and working plans of the new corporation.
Al-Wohaib said “the ITFC was established in order to increase the trade volume from the current 14 percent to 20 percent in intra trade among member countries by 2015, in addition to consolidating all of IDB’s trade finance activities under a single umbrella, thus eliminating the overlap and bringing greater efficiency to the delivery of trade finance services.”
He further said that “the ITFC will promote and facilitate intra-trade among member countries, alone or in cooperation with other providers of funds, utilizing such financial instruments that are Shariah-compliant and which the entity deems appropriate.”
IDB has been undertaking trade finance business activities as far back as 1977 under what was then referred to as the Import Trade Financing Operations Program (ITFO) which was established to finance the import financing needs of member countries.
Total trade finance approvals recorded since the inception of IDB exceeded $25 billion.
In the last five years alone, approvals have been in excess of $2 billion per annum, the bank said.