ITALY - First International Conference on Islamic Finance in Italy

www.mediapuzzlenews.net - It is the very first time that in Italy such conference takes place. Islamic Relief Italy together with ASSAIF (“Associazione per lo Sviluppo di Strumenti Alternativi e di Innovazione Finanziaria” - an Association which promotes alternative tools and financial innovation for economic development), Islamic Relief Germany and Islamic Relief International Fundraising have organized a one-day seminar that brought together the mayor players in the field of Islamic ethical finance in order to analyze and study Islamic financial solutions and their application in Occidental economy. (source)


So the question is: are Islamic products and lending practices really compatible with Western economic models? Well, this issue has been amply elucidated during the whole event by Dr. Alberto Brugnoli, founder and General Director of ASSAIF and international consultant in Islamic finance and ethics. Islamic financial principles are already operational in some European countries such as UK, France, Germany, Luxembourg, as Brugnoli commenced his speech. Although the term “Islamic finance” does not appear in any official documents, UK represents an emblematic case of how Islamic banking principles can be implemented in a totally different economic system. In 2006 UK has in fact opened its gates to the first Islamic Bank of Britain which established its former offices in Birmingham. Also the British Government has set up a specific legislative framework in order to encourage the development of Islamic finance. This requires a fiscal structure based on tailor made solutions which must fit the needs of Muslim citizens. Of course, this is an ongoing process as nowadays we are constrained to deal with a very fluctuating society which is daily subject to integration, multiculturalism, cultural mediation and so on. ! Just to have a slight idea, the Islamic finance is based on 5 principles: 1. transactions must be interest free (riba) 2. risk and speculation are not allowed 3. profit and loss sharing (all parties agree to share profits and losses of the enterprise) 4. ethical investments 5. asset-banking (any financial transaction must correspond to an indentifiable real activity)
During the last century the Muslim middle class has grown considerably in Europe, therefore we assist at a sort of a resurgence of Islamic finance in European countries.
In Italy there is a growing number of people who remain marginalized within financial circuits and is more and more difficult for them to get access to small amounts of credit. In this regard, in the second part of the debate Marco Morganti, founder and Managing Director of Banca Prossima and Paolo Limone, Managing Director of PerMicro illustrated their own solutions and products that somehow have a similar approach to the ones put into practice by ethical finance for what concerns allowing microcredit. As Morganti stated, accessing micro finance is a prerogative for banks as it represents a constitutional right claimed by democracy itself.There is a lot more to do in discovering other financial systems and evaluating solutions that can perfectly match Western needs. This conference is surely a first step in making an in-depth examination of how we can import economic resolutions from different systems and apply them to our own.

Source:  http://mediapuzzlenews.net/en/business/913/first_international_conference_on_islamic_finance_in_italy.aspx - March 28, 2012