A report issued by the consulting company Alpen Capital showed that the Islamic finance sector managed to prove its resilience with a limited slowdown last year, after recording a growth rate of 14.4 percent at the end of 2019. The total value of Islamic assets globally reached $2.9 trillion by the end of last year.
According to the report, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries accounted for 62.3 percent of the total assets of the 100 largest Islamic banks in the world at the end of 2019. The UAE's share reached 17.7 percent, as the list of the 100 largest Islamic banks in the world includes 7 UAE banks. The report indicated that the ratio of financing to deposits at the level of Islamic banks in the UAE rose to 95.2% at the end of last year, in light of the credit growth rate of 6.8% during 2020, and the increase in deposits by about 2.2%, reaching its share of 21.8% of the total assets of the banking sector. Knowing that the banking assets in the UAE represent a share of 24 percent of the gross domestic product.
The share of the GCC countries and the Middle East amounted to about 58.1 percent (63.3 billion dollars) of global sukuk issuances during the period from 2017 to 2019, and the UAE’s share during the period reached 33.1 percent, to be ranked second after Saudi Arabia, with issuances that amounted to about 77.07 billion dirhams (21 billion dollars) during the period.
Source (Ad-Dustour Newspaper-Jordan, Edited)
