UIII held a Joint International Webinar on Sharia Economic and Finance Leaders

August 01, 2021

UIII.AC.ID, DEPOK - July 26th 2021 - UIII recently held a joint international webinar on Islamic economics as a follow-up to the Advanced Training supervised by Bank Indonesia. The Advanced Training Program, a collaboration between the BI Institute (BINs) from Bank Indonesia and the Faculty of Economics and Business from UIII, was held in an online webinar called “Strategic Capabilities Development for Sharia Economic & Finance Leader - Towards an Impactful Islamic Social Finance".

In his opening remarks, the Rector of UIII appreciates and always support any strategic collaboration between UIII and Bank Indonesia. “This flagship program,” he said, “should be the first step of many potential capacity development programs that can be conducted between these two esteemed institutions.”

Furthermore, the Rector expects that UIII and Bank Indonesia would expand the cooperation and collaboration to other essential areas contributing to the acceleration of economic recovery and economic resilience.

In this regard, UIII and BI collaborate to conduct a Strategic Capabilities Development for Sharia Economic and Finance Leaders. The topic of the program is ‘Towards an Impactful Islamic Social Finance’. This five-day program is aimed to provide a comprehensive tool both from macro and micro perspective for stakeholders who are actively engaging in Islamic social finance. For this purpose, international and local trainers will present and share their experiences.

This event was an important training for prospective leaders of Indonesia’s Sharia Economics and Finance program which will be routinely held by the Faculty of Economics and Business at UIII and Bank Indonesia. The Rector of UIII also expressed his heartfelt appreciation to Bank Indonesia, specifically BI Institute and Islamic Economics and Finance Department (DEKS-BI), that have worked intensively with UIII to bring this program well materialized.

Following the opening ceremony by the Rector of UIII, Mr. Dody Budi Waluyo, the Deputy Governor of Bank Indonesia, as well as the Director of BINs of Bank Indonesia also gave their speeches, speaking highly of the event. There were four main speakers for this event, namely Prof. Candra Fajri Ananda, the special staff of Indonesia’s Ministry of Finance, Jardine Husman from the Department of Islamic Economics and Finance (DEKS) Bank Indonesia, Prof. Azmi Omar from INCEIF and last but not least Prof. Mehmet Asutay from Durham University, UK.

Despite the tight schedule, the event ran smoothly and all participants seemed enthusiastic because they felt that they had benefited from the knowledge conveyed by the speakers. Following the webinar on the first day, on July 28th, 2021, which was the second day of training for these aspiring leaders in Islamic economics and finance, everything went smoothly.

Very well and inspiringly opened on “Transformational Leadership & Development” by the Director of the BI Institute, Pak Dr. Solikin M. Juhro, followed by the World Bank Team on “The Poverty Alleviation Programs”, IsDB (Islamic Development Bank) represented by Dr. Hylmun Izhar talks about “The Financial Support.” In the last session, it was closed by reflection on “Maqashid al-Sharia” by Ustadz Dr. Cecep Maskanul Hakim from Bank Indonesia on the theme "The Fiqh perspective on SDG's."

In the question-and-answer session, the participants hoped that the scientific collaboration that would be developed at the Faculty of Economics and Business UIII, field practice by practitioners and policy formulation at the government level would work well in the future.

Among outstanding speakers included in the program were Prof. Mehmet Asutay and Prof. Habib Ahmed, both from Durham University, Prof. Azmi Omar (President and CEO of INCEIF), Ahmad Hafiz Bin Abdul Aziz & Shahira Zaireen Binti Johan Arief Jothi (The World Bank), and Zainul Cajee (Awqaf South Africa). Meanwhile, the selected participants came from various institutions, such as Bank Indonesia, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Financial Services Authority (OJK), Commercial and Islamic Commercial Banks, Zakat and Waqf practitioners, representative of Universities, and other related institutions.

Through this high-quality training, it is expected that the ATP could produce more prominent Sharia economic and finance leaders in society, both globally and nationally. (dd1)