Global Islamic Microfinance Forum to be held in UAE

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 PKR2.5bn 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 way 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.

Forum shall last for 3 days, at the end of which, a declaration will be issued.