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 Global Islamic insurance sales rose nearly 20 per cent to US$8.3 billion (Dh30.48bn) in 2010, but opportunities still abound for further expansion, a new report has found. Takaful contributions in the UAE grew by 28 per cent to reach $818 million during the year, said Ernst & Young's World Takaful Report 2012. Add Comment  AlexBank, one of Egypt's biggest commercial banks, says it expects to launch Islamic financial services next April. But the country's political divisions mean the regulatory environment in which the bank will operate is not clear. Last year's ouster of president Hosni Mubarak, whose regime neglected or discouraged Islamic finance for ideological reasons, has cleared the way for rapid growth of Islamic finance in Egypt, bankers believe.  Egypt is solidifying rules and regulations that will allow companies to issue Islamic bonds, or sukuk, in an early sign it is positioning itself to tap into a boom in Islamic finance.
The North African nation will "by the end of June" finalise the executive regulations to allow companies to issue Islamic corporate bonds, or bonds that comply with the Islamic ban on interest, said Ashraf Sharkawi, the head of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority.  A year on from the Arab Spring, prospects for Islamic finance to play a role in the rebuilding of affected countries has gathered pace; even as the countries continue to grapple with the impact of the uprisings.
The industry’s progress in the MENA countries has been especially marked in the first two months of this year.  Egypt plans to offer U.S.-dollar certificates of deposit (CD) to Egyptians living abroad at the beginning of March to help it raise foreign currency, al-Borsa newspaper on Tuesday quoted Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Saeed as saying. Egypt has said it is looking to sell CDs as well as Islamic sukuk instruments and land sales to Egyptians living abroad to help plug an external financing shortage estimated at $11 billion over the next 18 months.
 The government is reportedly preparing to raise around US$2 billion through its first sovereign Sukuk issuance as it seeks to build up declining public funds.
According to Islamic scholar Sheikh Hussein Hamid Hassan, the Egyptian government is convinced that a foreign currency Sukuk will fund the country’s development projects and plug a leak in its foreign reserves, which fell US$1.77 billion to US$16.35 billion in January. The reserves are down by more than 50% since its political revolution a year ago.  Egypt’s newly-elected Islamists say they want to introduce an index of companies that comply with sharia law as part of a wider move towards an Islamic economy.
Officials from Freedom and Justice, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, and from Nour, a party of ultraconservative Salafi Islamists, argue that such an index would encourage a slice of investors who, they allege, have shunned the bourse for fear that it might somehow contravene religious law.  Egypt may issue a sukuk, or Islamic bond, or alternatively certificates of deposit in foreign currency for Egyptians abroad, Finance Minister Mumtaz el-Saeed said.
“We are studying issuing sukuk,” he said today by telephone in Cairo. “We are comparing the benefits of issuing certificates of deposit with those of sukuks for Egyptians abroad.” The sukuks would be in “foreign currency,” he said.  Ali Habib's family had been selling trinkets to tourists in Cairo's historic Khan el Khalili district for 53 years before the revolution this year scared off many foreign visitors, cutting his sales in half. Mr. Habib considered closing his shop.
But he and many other small-business owners are growing more optimistic in the belief that help for Egypt's ailing economy is near—not from Western-educated economists, but from the Quran-quoting Islamists who appear on track to win about two-thirds of the parliamentary seats when Egypt's elections end in early January.  Retail and investment banks that offer sharia-compliant services are savouring the opportunities emerging in post-revolutionary countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
The prospect of providing budgetary support for governments and the increased power of moderate Islamist parties bode well for the development of sharia-compliant finance, bankers say. In all three countries, Islamist groups were suppressed for decades and Islamic finance struggled to gain traction. | 
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