Skip to main content

Australia Keen on Islamic Finance as Industry Nears $1 Trillion


Australia’s Assistant Treasurer Nick Sherry said he is leading a trade delegation to the Middle East as the South-Pacific nation seeks to attract Islamic finance investment.
Sherry will hold four days of talks with officials, regulators and bankers in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, according to an e-mailed statement today.
“My message is that in Australia we have what the wholesale Islamic finance market is calling out for,” Sherry said in the statement. “I will be focused very heavily on high- level talks on Australia’s tax treatment, regulation, promotion and export of Islamic finance, banking and insurance.”
The Islamic finance industry’s assets will keep expanding globally and may grow to at least $5 trillion from its current $950 billion, Moody’s Investors Service said this month. An Australian government report last year found that removing regulatory barriers to the development of Islamic finance products would provide the nation with better access to a “major source of offshore capital.”
Interest payments are banned under Islam’s Shariah law, which instead promotes profit-sharing agreements or structures that resemble rentals. Such deals are typically backed by physical assets, including natural resources like Australia’s.
Zaid Ibrahim & Co., Malaysia’s largest law firm, said in December that it would open overseas offices in Sydney and Melbourne due to increased demand for Islamic finance advisory services.
Westpac Banking Corp. plans to offer a Shariah-compliant commodity-trading service targeting Islamic institutions, the Sydney Morning Herald reported in February.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McDonald in Sydney atsmcdonald23@bloomberg.net.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-26/australia-begins-talks-on-islamic-finance-as-industry-nears-1-trillion.html

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Best IELTS and English language training institutions in Hyderabad

IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System. As the name implies it is basically an English test for testing the proficiency of the language in an individual.  Training for IELTS can be taken to pass the IELTS exam or to develop good english language skills. I am giving the training institute addresses for Hyderabad. The test system is jointly managed by the British Council,IDP education ltd and University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations and more than 1 million candidates are taking the exam all over the world. The test has two versions : 1. Academic 2. General training Academic  version is for people who plan to continue their higher education by enrolling in universities in countries like US,UK,Australia,Canada,New Zealand etc.The academic institutions in these countries consider the IELTS score as a criteria for the admission process. General training is mostly for immigration purposes in countries like Australia,New Zealand,Canada etc. It may ...

Communist party launches 'China Operating System' to oust iOS and Android

hina officials have launched a national operating system in an attempt to take back control of the country’s computer market from American companies such as Google and Apple. The software has been in development for more than a year, but has been released at a crucial time with revelations about US-led surveillance sparking fears over the integrity of American-designed software. Known simply as the China Operating System, or COS, the software can run on PCs, tablets and smartphones and has been based on the open-source Linux operating system. Chinese media say that the OS has been created “entirely independently” in order to provide better localization for a range of features – from Chinese-language keyboards, to integration with the country’s banks. At the launch of the event, one of the developers involved with the project reportedly criticized Western software , saying that Apple’s iOS was too closed, that Google’s Android OS suffered from fragmentation (ie, too many versi...

How to use home loans most effectively for tax benefits

1) Deduction on interest: If you are paying EMIs for a home loan you took to buy a house, the interest component in the EMI can be claimed as deduction. You must be both an owner and a co-borrower (in the loan) to claim tax benefits. This deduction can be claimed starting the year in which the construction of the house is completed. Suppose the construction of your house was completed on August 30, 2014, you can claim deduction for interest for the entire 12 months in financial year 2014-15. So every year a maximum of Rs. 2 lakh can be claimed for a house that you use for your own residence. If your house is rented, the entire interest for the year can be claimed as deduction. The interest payments for the year shall result in a loss under the head 'income from house property'. This loss can be adjusted against in the same year against other heads of income in your income tax return including salary. Therefore, it reduces your total taxable income and the tax you pay thereon. A...