Bursa Malaysia, the state-controlled financial exchange, is in talks with Middle Eastern banks to boost activity on its 18-month-old Islamic commodities market that increased five-fold last year.
Daily trading averaged RM351 million (S$147 million) in 2010, up from RM69.6 million in 2009 and has reached as high as RM4 billion this year, Raja Teh Maimunah, global head of Islamic markets at Kuala Lumpur-based Bursa, said in an interview on Monday.
The Iranian deputy oil minister said that the ministry plans to issue Islamic sukuk bonds made available for the first time for the littoral Persian Gulf states and Middle East countries.
The Mehr News Agency quoted Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr as saying that the oil ministry plans to diversify its financial resources and one means of doing this during the Fifth Socio-Economic Development Plan (2010-2015) is to publish bonds.