CENTRE OF ISLAMIC BANKING & ECONOMICS

Press Release

The Global Islamic Microfinance Forum will be held in U.A.E

The Forum will determine the Standards and policies for sustainable Islamic Microfinance

development.

05/09/2012

(Pakistan) The Global Islamic Microfinance Forum on Islamic Microfinance is going to be held in U.A.E on 8th

December, 2012 in which the delegates of more than 30 countries are expected. The purpose of Forum is to

introduce Islamic Microfinance in the global canvas as an effective tool for poverty alleviation and Social

development, to set its standards, to develop Islamic Microfinance internationally and to have dialogue with

International Donor/Development agencies for sustainable development. Two days specialized workshop is

been arranged after the forum in which the Shari’ah standards and marketing strategies of Islamic

Microfinance will be discussed. It should be noted that this forum is being jointly arranged by AlHuda Centre

of Islamic Banking and Economics (CIBE) and Akhuwat. Akhuwat is a Pakistan based institute which has been

distributed 2.5 Billion PKR amongst 177,000 families via Islamic Microfinance.

Executive Director of Akhuwat, Mr. Amjad Saqib said that through this Forum, Islamic Microfinance will be

introduced as a sustainable system around the world so that Islamic Microfinance could be properly utilized

in order to take the world out of the darkness of poverty.

While briefing about the purpose and aims of this Forum, Chief Executive Officer of AlHuda Centre of Islamic

Banking and Economics, Mr. Muhammad Zubair Mughal said that poverty is going up due to the failure of

present microfinance system whereas in order to solve this problem, whole world is looking towards Islamic

Microfinance. He said that if Islamic Microfinance would not be included in the strategies for alleviating

poverty then the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of United Nations would become

so difficult because Muslims are 46% of World’s total poverty and United Nations has added 26 countries

from the 57 Countries of OIC among the Least Developed Countries. So, Islamic Microfinance is mandatory

in order to alleviate poverty from the Muslim Countries because Muslims avoid Conventional Microfinance

due to the factor of interest, as Interest is strictly prohibited in Islamic that’s why Interest is an important

reason for the poverty in Muslim Countries. It is worth to mentioning that Islamic Microfinance is a system,

it is not a religion, I can be utilized/operated by Muslims or Non-Muslims for social development & poverty

alleviation.

He further said that now the time has come that the International Organization like UN, ADB, IFC, USAID,

GIZ, DIFD, and IFAD etc. play their role to alleviate poverty from the world by including Islamic Microfinance

in the strategies to reduce poverty. He said that Islamic Microfinance has more characteristics to alleviate

poverty in comparison with Conventional Microfinance and it can be easily integrated with all the models of

Microfinance like Grameen Model, Village banking Model, co- operative Model and Self Help Group Model

etc. So in order to introduce Islamic Microfinance in the world, very fewer changes would be needed to

make in Microfinance industry.

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