Global Islamic Microfinance Forum (GIMF) will be organised jointly by Al-Huda Centre of Islamic Banking and Economics (CIBE) and AKHUWAT in November this year. Dr Amjad Saqib, Executive Director, AKHUWAT inaugurated the logo of GIMF in Logo Inauguration Ceremony at a hotel in Dubai. Numerous people from financial, banking and microfinance industry took part in this enormous ceremony.
Speaking to the public, Dr Amjad Saqib said Islamic microfinance is rapidly increasing all around the world where numerous people are fulfilling their financial needs free from interest and flourishing their small businesses incredibly. The purpose of this fourth GIMF is to unite Islamic Microfinance Industry under one roof. Presenting AKHUWAT as a role model, he added that it is an organisation that was started from 10,000 and now has reached to 9 million and its fruits are reaching to approximately 500,000 families across the country and it is a prominent example of best practices of Islamic microfinance.
Talking about the purpose and motives of fourth GIMF, Mohammad Zubair Mughal, Chief Executive, Al-Huda Centre of Islamic Banking and Economics said poverty is a world-wide phenomenon and unfortunately, spreading in Muslim countries drastically. Almost half of the world's poor population reside in Muslim world while Muslims constitute 26 percent of the total world's population, its mean poverty in Muslim world increasing very rapidly, the main reason is its avoidance of interest among Muslims as Interest is strictly prohibited in Islam and, on the other hand, conventional microfinance has drastically failed to alleviate poverty in Muslim. Thus, Islamic microfinance is evidently essential so that Muslim and non-Muslim both can take the maximum advantage of this extremely fruitful product.
He said Islamic microfinance is going through big challenges, eg non-availability of Shariah Compliant funds, misconceptions regarding Islamic microfinance, lack of manpower, regularity and Shariah problem. The purpose of this forum is to gather the stakeholders under one platform to find out the remedy to these problems to give a strong support to rapidly increasing Islamic Microfinance industry.
He added that delegates from more than 27 countries participated in 3rd GIMF and it is anticipated that more than 35 countries' participants will be coming into this forum in which multilateral organisations, development agencies, Microfinance, Islamic microfinance, NGOs, conventional and Islamic banks, philanthropists and other financial organisations are included. On the first two days of the forum, Islamic microfinance its challenges and opportunities, new products, micro takaful, IT integration, micro saving, entrepreneur development and other prominent topics will be discussed in detail. On the next two days, a detailed discussion will be made on growth of Islamic microfinance and its marketing strategies.
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