5th World Islamic Economic Forum opens in Jakarta

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-02 15:13

JAKARTA -- Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared open the 5th World Islamic Economic Forum in Jakarta on Monday.

The forum, with the theme "Food and Energy Security and Stemming the Tide of Global Financial Crisis", is expected to foster channels of communication to help address and resolve important economic issues by establishing dialogue through business partnerships among Muslim entrepreneurs as well as between Muslim and non-Muslim business people.

The president said that the world had kept seeing dismal signals, such as the shrinking markets, plummeting exports, decreasing rates of growth, diving industrial production, declining wealth, capital that takes flight to parts unknown, and evaporating jobs.

"The United States, Europe and Japan are already in deep recession. There is possibility that things will get worse before they get better," he said. "The latest breaking news is that the contagion of this epidemic has stricken the real economy and now threatens the world with the collapse of manufacturing industries. "

Furthermore, he said that the global financial meltdown is only part of the world's worries, which also include other urgent global challenges faced by world citizens, such as climate, energy and food security.

However, President Yudhoyono said that people should not despair and submit to a self-defeatist attitude. Instead, he asked Muslims and non-Muslims to join their hands in overcoming the crises by taking right policy measures and unyielding determination.

"(The Crises) will not go away by themselves. We must come to grips with them, overcome them and make sure their history is nevermore repeated. And the only way to do that is for all of us in the human race -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- to work closely together as we have never done before," he said.

Therefore, the President called on the establishment of an "Islamic World Expenditure Support Fund", which is expected to help the developing and emerging Islamic economies to achieve their development goals by receiving budget financing in addition to regular development assistance, and make the least developed Muslim countries directly benefit from the availability of sizeable reserves in the hands of oil-exporting Muslim countries.

"By establishing that Muslim Fund, we make our call for a " Global Expenditure Support Fund" so much more reasonable and acceptable," said the President. He said that Indonesia as a member of the G-20 proposed, during the Summit in Washington D.C., the "Global Expenditure Support Fund", and plans to advance this idea during the next G-20 summit in London in April.

The forum, which is scheduled to end on March 3, was attended by 1,557 delegates from 38 countries and around 90 corporate leaders.