Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank

The last decade witnessed an increasing trend in markets’ volatilities and financial crises. During the same period, derivatives, the most common instruments for hedging, have been growing at an exponential rate. Apparently, derivatives did not help stabilize markets and attenuate financial crises. This is not difficult to explain, since derivatives are also the main instruments for speculation. More than 97% of derivatives users are speculators, while less than 3% are hedgers.

During the IDB 23rd Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors held in Cotonou, Benin, in November 1998, the Bank organized its. The 9th Annual Symposium on “Preparing the Ummah for the 21st Century: Promotion of Information Technology for Development” recommended the Islamic Development Bank to develop a ‘Guideline for a National IT Strategy” to help the MCs.

The paper provides an Islamic perspective on the public revenue and expenditure balance and offers various Shariah compatible possibilities to alleviate the chronic imbalances between the two in the IDB member countries._x000D_ Governments require large amounts of resources for financing basic programs such as poverty reduction and maintenance of law and order. In most IDB member countries the required resources are not available. Therefore, in these countries large budget deficits have become a severe chronic problem.

This is an examination of the functional and operational activities done during production and marketing of agricultural commodities and contemporary Islamic modes that Islamic banks use to finance them and assesses the possibility of financing them through Islamic instruments.

Over the 1990s, several Arab countries made substantial progress in financial reform as part of extensive structural adjustment programmes. The reform aimed at transforming the economy into a market-driven economy dominated by the private sector, improve the capacity of financial institutions to mobilise domestic savings, improve the effectiveness of monetary policy, and strengthen financial soundness.

IRTI in its research activities pays special attention to areas relating to promoting trade and economic cooperation among member countries. Countertrade was viewed in late Eighties by IRTI as a potential means of enhancing trade among member countries and of promoting economic cooperation among them. Looking at countertrade as a potential phenomenon, IRTI felt the need to create, among planners and policy makers, awareness about various facets of this mode of trade and to exchange ideas on the possibility of exploiting this mode for their mutual benefit.

This study provides a comparison to the economic features of different modes of Islamic financing. The objective of the monograph is two fold. Firstly, it aims at helping planners and policy makers interested in Islamizing the financial system of their economies understand the economic implications of various modes of financing and, thus, formulate policies that benefit from the application of these modes.

In this paper we examine the performance of Bahrain as a leading financial center in the Gulf region. We estimate how close Bahrain banks are from their potential profits that a best-practice bank can earn and compare the profit efficiency of Islamic vs conventional banks. We employ the Fourier-flexible functional model to estimate the profit efficiency index._x000D_ _x000D_ Our findings show that the profit efficiency of Bahrain banks is relatively stable and in line with the OECD banks.

Sustainable development is targeted by many developing nations. In economic literature, development is defined as creating process of welfare and providing necessities for public to maintain opportunities and choices of a society. Nowadays, we not only use economic indicators to evaluate the level of development, but it is also necessary to introduce non- economic indicators such as hygienic, educational, demographic and other socio-cultural factors along with economic factors.