Islamic Finance Industry in the Middle East and North Africa: Ways out of the Exogenous Crisis

For almost a decade the world has been struck by two global financial crises – the crisis of 2008–2009 and the ongoing socio-economic crisis caused by the COVID–19 pandemic. Although these crises continue to have a serious impact on the global economy, they differ in terms of root causes and timing of action. The crisis of 2020 affected almost all spheres of society, not only financial organizations suffered, but, first of all, small and medium–sized entrepreneurs whose business had to be temporarily suspended or closed completely.

The programs of anti–crisis measures taken by the governments of different countries practically do not differ from each other in their conceptual component, declaring financial injections into the banking sector or the social sector as priority measures to support the population as priority measures, taking into account the capabilities of the Digital Industry 4.0 mechanisms to a small extent, including the case of providing the necessary financial assistance to all economic entities.

The work of Islamic financial institutions is directly related to real business, therefore, in the case when small and medium–sized enterprises do not have financial and other opportunities, including in the case of restrictive measures introduced by governments, to interact with their financial institutions, the financial regulators of the country together with the management of banks should develop a number of plans for overcoming the current situations, taking into account the goals of Sharia (Maqasid al–Shari’ah).

The list of standard anti�crisis products for the financial market is confined to social Sukuk, Qard al–Hasan, Zakat, Waqf, however, taking into account the fact that it is crisis situations that provide a good opportunity for the development of new directions (products, services), the market of Islamic financial instruments needs to switch to FinTech solutions, especially since the forecasts of the countries of the Arab region on this direction show positive dynamics and tremendous potential.

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