The IFSB disseminates data of Islamic banking systems from 21 countries, including full-fledged Islamic banking data of Afghanistan for the first time

The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) is pleased to announce the dissemination of country-level data on financial soundness and growth of the Islamic banking systems for Q2 of 2018 from 21 IFSB member jurisdictions. This eleventh dissemination completes the availability of quarterly data from Q4 of 2013 to Q2 of 2018, as part of the IFSB’s Prudential and Structural Islamic Financial Indicators (PSIFIs) project, which currently compiles data from Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. A special feature of this dissemination is the inclusion of full-fledged Islamic banking data of Afghanistan for the first time as one Islamic banking window has been converted to the first full-fledged Islamic bank in April 2018.

The Secretary-General of the IFSB, Dr. Bello Lawal Danbatta stated, “With a regular dissemination of the PSIFIs data since its launch in April 2015, the IFSB database has received global acknowledgement as credible, consistent and comprehensive database of Islamic banking systems covering over 95% of global Islamic banking activities and all the jurisdictions with systematically important Islamic banking sector.” In the same context, he further stated, “This project has entered into a new stage as the IFSB secretariat has started collecting detailed financial statements (DFS) – more granular information on income statements and financial positions by countries – and is expected to start the dissemination of the DFS data in the beginning of 2019.” “The IFSB also targets to extend its database to Islamic insurance (tak?ful) and Islamic capital market (ICM) sectors by the end of 2019”, he further asserted.

The total assets of the Islamic banking industry grew by 1.7% from USD 1,625 billion in 2017Q2 to USD 1,652 billion in 2018Q2 (calculated from country-wise aggregated data converted into USD terms using end-period exchange rates). Financing by Islamic banks from the jurisdictions participating in the PSIFIs project which grew by 1.9% reached USD 1,013 billion in 2018Q2 from USD 994 billion in 2017Q2.

The number of full-fledged Islamic banks and Islamic windows of conventional banks in 21 countries stood at 189 and 82 in 2018Q2 as compared to 184 and 84 in 2017Q2 respectively.

The IFSB Task Force on PSIFIs comprise representatives from all participating jurisdictions have been greatly facilitating the collection of Islamic banking data.  The IFSB Secretariat has been regularly conducting capacity building meetings with the country representatives of the Task Force, where three international organisations – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – are also the members, focusing on enhanced clarity and consistency of reporting indicators across jurisdictions.