Bursa Malaysia bags two global Islamic awards

07/07/2016 20:02 AST

Bursa Malaysia Bhd was named “Best Islamic Finance Facilitation Platform Asia 2016” and “Best Islamic Exchange Asia 2016” by the Global Banking & Finance Review.

The awards were conferred in recognition of the double-digit growth of Bursa Malaysia’s syariah-compliant commodity trading platform, Bursa Suq Al Sila’ (BSAS), since its inception in 2009.

This is the second consecutive year that the exchange won the “Best Islamic Finance Facilitation Platform Asia” award.

Last year, BSAS won two other awards namely “Best Islamic Exchange 2015” by the Global Islamic Finance Awards and “Best Interbroker for Islamic Transactions 2015” in the 10th Islamic Finance News Service Providers Poll.

“Bursa Malaysia is proud to be recognised for two consecutive years by the international finance community for the performance of our BSAS global commodity murabahah trading platform,” Bursa Malaysia CEO Datuk Seri Tajuddin Atan said in a statement yesterday.

“The consistent double-digit growth is testament to its wider acceptance and increasing investor confidence in the BSAS platform. We will continue to remain focused on efforts to increase the breadth and depth of our syariah-compliant products and services for both institutional and retail investors,” he added.

The BSAS platform saw average daily trading value grow 121% to RM15.2 billion in 2015 which can be attributed to increased acceptance and demand from the domestic and international participants especially in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and Asia regions.

Bursa Malaysia attributed the strong growth in BSAS trading to the conversion of bank deposits from mudharabah to murabahah contracts and the growing interest in tenor-based pricing introduced in January 2015.

“BSAS has been recognised as a platform with the capacity to undertake small to large commodity trading in various major currencies; made possible by the availability of a large supply of physical commodities,” it said.

The Sun Daily