JEDDAH, 5 June 2005 — The third Islamic economic conference, which concluded its deliberations at Um Al-Qura University in Makkah recently, called for the establishment of an Islamic capital market by central banks as well as Islamic banks and other financial institutions in Muslim countries.
The conference emphasized the need for enhancing economic cooperation among the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) countries to set up powerful economic blocs capable of facing international competition and dealing with global economic organizations.
The three-day conference, which was opened by Abdullah Al-Faiz, undersecretary at the Makkah governorate on Tuesday, urged supervising authorities in Muslim countries to monitor activities of Islamic financial and insurance firms.
“The conference called upon Muslim governments to upgrade curricula of Islamic economic departments at their universities to help them get along with labor market requirements,” the Saudi Press Agency reported yesterday quoting its final communiqué.
The conferees also proposed the setting up of special panels at Islamic insurance companies to ensure they comply with Shariah regulations. They urged Islamic governments to set up independent corporations for the collection and distribution of Zakat efficiently.
They also emphasized the need to modernize endowment establishments to help them cope with modern economic developments in order to tackle poverty, ignorance and disease.
The conference urged the establishment of a joint reserve fund for Islamic banks to support them with liquid money whenever required. It called for the repatriation of funds to promote economic and social development in Muslim states.
The communiqué urged greater economic, administrative, judicial, financial and monetary reforms in the OIC member states. “Educational development in Islamic countries must be linked with the comprehensive national development plan,” it said, adding that more money must be allocated for research, training and development.
The conferees called for the establishment of national technological research centers to promote research in the member states. “We have to take adequate measures to control fluctuation of exchange rate of currencies to encourage trade exchange among the OIC states.”
Other recommendations of the conference were: Tough measures to prevent money laundering as well as economic and administrative corruption; more efforts to promote privatization of state-owned corporations; and financial institutions must comply with edicts of authorized Islamic fiqh councils.
