Govt interested in an Asean-wide bourse linkage

KUALA LUMPUR: The recommendation to link Bursa Malaysia and the Singapore Exchange (SGX) needs to be studied, as the government is more interested in an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Connect concept.

Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said Malaysia is part of the Asean community, and does not want to cause any unease among its members, as to why it opted for Singapore and not the other countries.

“The Connect idea is good, but should be Asean-wide. We should try an Asean model. It would be good if you could introduce Shariah investing, especially amongst our neighbours such as Indonesia, which has a huge retail market, about 10 times bigger than that of Malaysia,” he told reporters at the Shariah Investing Fair 2018, here today.

He said 76 per cent of companies listed on Bursa Malaysia were classified as Shariah-compliant.

“Bursa Malaysia has a solid foundation to continue developing its niche in the Islamic capital market and leverage on the strong performance and achievements to promote Islamic offerings as an alternative to conventional ones.

“Islamic wealth management is a new area of growth and offers a great potential given the trends that we have observed in liquidity outflow from traditional to Islamic wealth management markets,” Lim added.

As at end-April 2018, Malaysia had RM166.7 billion worth of Islamic asset under management (AUM), and among the largest in the world. It represented 21.2 per cent of the total AUM in the country.

The Shariah Investing Fair, organised by Bursa Malaysia Bhd seeks to raise public awareness and retail investments into the domestic stock market, especially Shariah-compliant assets. — Bernama