While Islamic finance is popular within Malaysia, concerns have been voiced about the country's sluggish growth as an international centre. To combat this, regulators in the country are pinning their hopes on sharia-compliant fund and wealth management. Stefania Palma reports.
Watching the success of its Asian counterparts acted as the catalyst for Malaysia to rethink its economy, reducing its dependence on natural resources and putting greater faith in the private sector, all while reducing government spending and keeping debt to a manageable level. The country's minister without portfolio, Idris Jala, describes the plan's progress.
Drops in oil prices have undeniably affected Malaysia’s economy. But minister of financial affairs Wahid Omar tells Stefania Palma how this was also a blessing to a country that is successfully diversifying its economy and government revenue sources through reforms such as the introduction of a goods and services tax.
Global oil price volatility may be weighing heavily on Malaysia’s economy, but such events are not putting the country’s banking sector off its stride. Indeed, its lenders are increasingly looking to opportunities in the Asean region and Islamic banking to diversify their balance sheets.
Former Maybank CEO and Malaysia's incumbent minister of financial affairs, Abdul Wahid Omar, talks to Stefania Palma about Malaysia’s decades-long quest for high-income status, describing how he is looking to achieve this goal while ensuring that the country's population feels the benefits of its economic rise.
The increasingly international outlook of the Islamic finance market place is providing new growth opportunities for Islamic banks and, according to Standard Chartered Saadiq, Malaysia's chief executive, Wasim Akhtar Saifi, is also offering much-needed solutions to the industry's longer term liquidity management problems.