With the inclusion of new countries’ data, the total assets of the Islamic banking industry grew to $1,699 billion in the first quarter of 2018 (2018Q1) from $1,573 billion in 2017Q1, marking an increase of 8 per cent, said the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB).

IFSB has announced the dissemination of country-level data on financial soundness and growth of the Islamic banking systems for Q1 of 2018 from 21 IFSB member jurisdictions.

 This tenth dissemination includes the data from four newly joined countries, namely: Qatar, Palestine, Lebanon, and the first time for the UK. This dissemination completes the availability of quarterly data from Q4 of 2013 to Q1 of 2018.

The countries currently participating in the IFSB’s Prudential and Structural Islamic Financial Indicators (PSIFIs) database project include: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, the UAE and the UK.

The Secretary-General of the IFSB, Dr Bello Lawal Danbatta stated: “With the dissemination of Islamic banking data of the United Kingdom for the first time, the PSIFIs database have achieved an important step in extending its outreach to another important Islamic finance market.”

 “Under Phase IV of this project, current template for data collection for the Islamic banking sector is being extended to the template of detailed sector-level financial statements (DFS) for more granular data on income statements as well as financial positions, which provides more in-depth understanding to the data users on the trends and stability of Islamic banking activities in participating jurisdictions and at global level.

“The IFSB has also undertaken several efforts to expand the database coverage to Islamic insurance (takaful) and Islamic capital market sectors (ICM), including conducting an industry wide survey, finalisation of the list of indicators and compilation methodologies,” he added.

Financing by Islamic banks from the jurisdictions participating in the PSIFIs project which grew by 6.7 per cent reached $1,033 billion in 2018Q1 from $968 billion in 2017Q1.

 The number of full-fledged Islamic banks and Islamic windows of conventional banks in 21 IFSB member participating countries stood at 188 and 85 in 2018Q1 as compared to 184 and 84 in 2017Q1 respectively.

 Since the Islamic banking database is already covering over 95 per cent of global Islamic banking activity, the IFSB’s next focus is to establish a global database which will provide detailed sector-level financial statements for each participating countries.

Similarly, while completing the background work for extension of the project to ICM and takaful sectors, the IFSB Secretariat will invite selected ICM and takaful regulatory and supervisory authorities for participation in this project in the fourth quarter of 2018. – TradeArabia News Service