Lucky Or Unlucky, Sri Mulyani Calls Indonesia The Largest Country To Issue Sharia Debt Instruments

Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani. (Photo: screenshot of the Ministry of Finance's Youtube)

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani, said if Indonesia became a leading country that succeeded in issuing sharia-based financing instruments (Sukuk). This was conveyed by the Minister of Finance when he was a speaker at the forum of The 9th ASEAN Universities International Conference on Islamic Finance (AICIF) 2021 which was broadcast virtually.

"In the global Islamic financial industry market, Indonesia is a major contributor in terms of international Sukuk issuance", she said on Wednesday, November 17.

Unmitigated, this state treasurer revealed that the share taken by the Republic of Indonesia was almost a quarter of the total Sukuk currently circulating.

"Indonesia has a share of 23.11 percent of all Sukuk issuances with a total value of 23.65 billion US dollars", she said.

Even though it has occupied the top position, the Minister of Finance assessed that this country still has a chance to increase the contribution of global financing based on sharia principles.

"Indonesia has a very big opportunity to be able to continue to optimize the Islamic financial market by developing more Sukuk variants, such as waqf, linked Sukuk, and green Sukuk", she said.

Furthermore, she also said that one of the keys to the success of the Republic of Indonesia is being observant in combining Islamic financial instruments with the current situation that is of public concern.

"This is very much in line with what we all discussed today to develop trade and markets that are in line with the issue of climate change", she said.

In detail, Sri Mulyani explained that in the first semester of 2021 the Indonesian government had succeeded in issuing green Sukuk at the international level with a value of 700 million US dollars.

"This means that in total, Indonesia's global green Sukuk issuance has reached 3.5 billion US dollars since 2018", she added.

Just so you know, apart from issuing sharia (debt) financing in foreign markets, the government is also known to release the same instruments for the domestic market. This was conveyed by the Deputy Minister of Finance (Wamenkeu), Suahasil Nazara, in a recent webinar which stated that retail green Sukuk had managed to reap public funds of IDR 6.88 trillion.