VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati drew attention to the fact that Islamic finance has grown positively and is more stable than conventional finance amid the ongoing pandemic.

"National banking intermediation has tended to decline, but the performance of sharia banking is actually stable and growing higher than conventional banking," Sri Mulyani stated while speaking at the 2020 Sharia Business and Academic Sinergy (SBAS) symposium held virtually here on Tuesday.

As of September 2020, the Islamic financial assets totaled Rp1,710.16 trillion, which was encouraging, according to the minister.

The total Islamic financial assets were spread across three instruments: Islamic banking financial assets amounting to Rp575.85 trillion; the Islamic non-bank financial industry (IKNB) worth Rp111.44 trillion, and the Islamic capital market amounting to Rp1,022.87 trillion.

The market share of Islamic finance in Indonesia reached 9.69 percent by the end of the third quarter of 2020.

The minister attributed the positive performance of the sharia financial industry chiefly to the performance of sharia banking.

The stability of the Islamic financial industry was indicated by the growth of Islamic bank assets reaching 10.97 percent in September 2020. The realization was higher than the growth of conventional bank assets, at 7.77 percent.

Other indicators included Islamic banks' third-party funds (DPK) that grew by 11.56 percent, while conventional ones were only 11.49 percent; Sharia financing growth reached 9.42 percent; while conventional bank credit growth was only 0.55 percent until last September; and Islamic bank capital adequacy ratio reached 23.5 percent; as well as the non-performing financing ratio of 3.31 percent.

Meanwhile, in terms of the Islamic capital market, the value of stock capitalization generally decreased, but an annual growth of 108 percent was recorded in the number of investors in Islamic stocks.

"In the last year until June 2020, Islamic stock investors have increased by 32 percent as compared to the earlier position in 2019," she stated.

Meanwhile, for the January-June 2020 period, Islamic stock transactions rose by 26 percent to reach 633 thousand transactions, from 501 thousand transactions recorded during the same period in 2019.

Meanwhile, the volume of transactions in the first semester of 2020 had reached 6.2 billion, an increase of 57 percent, from 3.9 billion during the corresponding period in 2019. (antaranews)