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» Lord Paulett, Chairman of WVB, Addresses the Combined IFN Africa and Egypt Forum
Lord Paulett discussed the opportunities and requirements for the Islamic Finance Industry to increase inward and foreign investment to Africa in view of the large Muslim populations in many countries in Africa. The forum enabled a full and frank exchange of ideas. Lord Paulett identified historical reasons for distortion in the African markets namely the introduction of western economic ideology following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. However, now that there is a much greater understanding of and desire to, apply Islamic Financial methodology and practices, there is a need for Africa generally and Egypt in particular, to reconsider the current ways of conducting business and to be creative in developing new ways to attract investors.
Lord Paulett stated that the creation of a Social Islamic Index in Africa would greatly assist in attracting foreign investment, and particularly highlighted the opportunities for developing ETFs in Egyptian and other banks when furnished with Shari’a compliant indices.
The message was clear, Africa and Egypt need to determine how to best attract and retain global investment using economic models that are important to them in order to build a future consistent with their desires and not to look back to Ottoman or western models except where such models help to achieve the goal.
World Vest Base was a sponsor of the event held in association with AAOIFI and IIFM in CAIRO on the 8th of December and attended by the key organizations in the region.
Notes for Editors:
World Vest Base is the leading independent privately owned provider of global fundamentals covering over 99.99% of global market capitalization. Crucially WVB fundamentals data is consistent in breadth and depth (subject to availability), across the globe. The data provided for an African or Egyptian company is presented in an identical format including breadth and depth, as Western or Asian companies are. Additionally WVB has produced a global Shari’a Compliance Rating that enables an investment universe according to differing interpretations of Islamic Finance to be achieved very easily, and then the ability to build and define Islamic Indices. By incorporating key Islamic Financial data into core feeds WVB has solved the old problem of how the decision making process of Islamic Scholars can be reconciled with the
regulatory regime of Western companies. WVB provides both parties with a feed that contains all the data required for both parties to be able to achieve their part whilst enabling a clear audit trail.
Further information can be found at: www.wvb.com
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