Malaysia leads in sustainable and responsible investing (SRI) sukuk issuance among the ASEAN6 countries, accounting for US$3.9 billion of issuance value or 56% of the total ASEAN SRI sukuk issuance, as of November 2021.

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Despite the economic challenges wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, the global sukuk market recorded a 21.2% y-o-y increase in issuance to USD42.3 bil in 1Q 2021 (1Q 2020: USD34.9 bil). Malaysia led global sukuk issuance with a 42.4% market share (USD17.9 bil) in 1Q 2021, followed by Saudi Arabia (30.6% or USD12.9 bil), Indonesia (16.5% or USD7.0 bil), Turkey (5.4% or USD2.2 bil) and Kuwait (2.8% or USD1.2 bil). Cumulatively, sukuk issues from these five countries accounted for 97.7% of global issuance.

Year 2020 is finally behind us. It was an extraordinary year for many people. For the common people, lives were greatly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. For bond market investors, the gains from the bond market were nothing short of eye-catching. The Ringgit bond market performance as measured by the benchmark RF BPAM All Bond index, rose 6.86% to end the year at 188.887 point from 176.759 point a year ago. However, in terms of percentage, it had not surpassed the previous year gains of 8.72%, considering the fact that year 2020 was more volatile in nature. Investors were in panic selling mode in the early part of the year due to the Movement Control Order (MCO) but slowly and eventually regained its composure when Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) stepped in to lower the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) to record lows of 1.75% from 3.00% over the course of the year.

MITI's Recollective Global Edition highlights Malaysia's competitiveness as a trade and investment hub for the world. In this issue, the e-magazine showcases Malaysia's strengths in halal, which is fast-emerging as a high-value industry.

Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation and IFN recently released the Islamic Fintech & Digital Financial Inclusion Report.

Countries worldwide have already taken measures and actions towards this. Some are already relying significantly on renewable energy (RE) and many have enforced energy efficiency (EE) measures. The need for RE and EE measures makes environmental sense as well as good economic sense in the long run. INCEIF in collaboration with CIMB have produced a report entitled "Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy and Financing: A Global Benchmarking with Focus on South East Asia and China".

The risk-sharing concept remains an elusive phenomenon in the Islamic financial sphere. It is often mistaken as a position of taking on risk as opposed to dissipating risk. The paper discusses the misconceptions of risk sharing and why it should the business model for Islamic finance and proposes for the development of digital platform/ marketplace as the delivery channel for risk-sharing based financial intermediation, social finance, trade finance and discretionary mutual takaful.

Asia plays a significant role in both the global economy and the Islamic financial system. The Islamic financial industry in Asia has grown from strength to strength with total Islamic financial assets registering annual growth of 13.1% between 2010 and 2016. Asia has spearheaded a number of Islamic finance initiatives and innovative developments that create new growth areas which will further spur the industry’s progress. Moving forward, the region’s infrastructure development needs will also present large growth opportunity for Islamic finance to have stronger footing.

The paradigm shift towards a more sustainable investing has geared up. Green finance that forms part of the segment is also gaining traction, particularly to support transformation efforts towards green economy.