By Rushdi Siddiqui, Global Head of Islamic Finance, Thomson Reuters

‘Don’t cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you’ve got.’ - Steven Pressfield

On November 22, 2011, the world’s first Islamic interbank benchmark rate (IIBR) was launched. It is the result of a collaborative approach taken by many Islamic financial institution, industry associations, and Shariah scholars, over the course of 24 months, to a decades-old industry challenge: how to decouple Islamic finance from a conventional Western pricing benchmark (LIBOR) and the law of necessity when an ‘Islamic’ alternative was not available. The objective was to support and preserve Islamic finance authenticity.
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Even as the Egyptian Government looks to revive the country’s economy, it has turned down the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s stand-by agreement. A bold move no doubt, but was it a populist decision or purely a financial one? And if the Egyptian Government’s decision to turn down the IMF a move to spurn Mubarak-praising entities, why is it borrowing from the Gulf?

Egypt’s decision to turn down International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank is a bold move, given that the country’s fiscal situation remains fragile. READ MORE HERE