WIEF Foundation urged to tie up with Muslim bodies in India

NEW DELHI, July 6 (Bernama) -- India has encouraged the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) Foundation to tie up with Muslim organisations here to improve their overall economic well-being. Its Law and Justice Minister Salman Khurshid said WIEF could link up with those institutions which promised reforms. "The problem with reform is sometimes it gets questioned easily," he said at WIEF's Special Luncheon Talk here on Thursday. Salman said the Indian government's association with Islamic institutions in the country had been an old-style association of the past. "Although there is a vibrant Muslim participation in democracy and every walk of life its institutions are still far between that truly represent modern (Mustafa Kamal) Ataturk's (Father of Modern Turkey) kind of development approach," he said. The luncheon talk was part of WIEF's one-day International Advisory Panel (IAP) meeting held for the first time in India -- the Asian powerhouse with the third largest Muslim population in the world. Musa said WIEF was formed to enhance the economic well-being of global communities and this has gone beyond just Muslim nations alone. He said WIEF has now become an ideal platform to introduce mechanisms that beckoned further growth like Islamic banking which has grown into a global development tool and the fastest growing sub-sector in the global banking industry. Musa said Islamic finance and Islamic venture capital could help fuel the growth of small and medium enterprises sector in developed and developing countries and lead to a more equitable distribution of wealth. -- BERNAMA