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How Islamic Finance Can Finance Halal Industry

11 March 2015

PAKISTAN - Islamic financing can be used to help finance halal meat production.

This will be the central theme of one of the keynote speeches at the 4th Annual International Halal Conference and Expo this week.

The theme of finance and halal meat production will be at the core of CEO of management consultancy FAAIF Camille Paldi’s presentation at the event organised by USAID, Punjab Halal Development Agency, and Halal Research Council in Lahore

According to Ms Paldi (pictured), halal food has a very low rate of incidences of food poisoning and contamination compared to food sold in major supermarkets and fast food chains.

This she says is often contains e-coli and other life threatening pathogens, bacteria, and substances because of the unclean processing and packaging procedures, chemical additives, pesticides, and hormones.

However, she says the Islamic method of meat preparation is based on two important principles - Tasmiyah and Tazkiyah.

Tasmiyah refers to invoking the name of Allah when slaughtering so as to ask his permission while Tazkiyah means purification and the cleaning the meat of blood through slaughter.

She says that Islamic slaughter methods are beneficial to human health in that the blood completely drains from the carcase, producing healthier and cleaner meat free from excessive microbial growth.

In addition, the meat does not have any concerns over toxins, as the slaughter is swift, quick, all-encompassing, and as painless as possible.

Ms Paldi halal meat processing plant may be financed with an istisna’a sukuk.

Istisnáa is a pre-delivery financing instrument used to finance projects where the commodity is transacted before it comes into existence.

Project financing can be undertaken through an Istisna’a contract whereby funds are advanced to pay for the supplies and labour costs by an Islamic bank.

Once the project is completed, the advances are repaid from the revenue derived from the project.

To introduce bonds based on istisna’a, a parallel istisna’a contract is generally used where by the financier enters a contract with a subcontractor, who actually builds the facility being financed.

To use istisna’a, the public authority or private company commissioning the project provides details of the specifications and timing of the schemes.

The financier then sets these out in the tender documents.

Bids are subsequently invited from contractors, who will specify how they intend to sell completed parts of the project over time and the amount of each payment instalment expected.

These instalments will include an element of profit over the construction costs.

As the financier is expecting a stream of payments over a specified period, certificates can be issued based on the income expected.

As the deferred price certificates represent debt obligations, they cannot be traded for cash at below face value in a secondary market.

They can, however, be used to purchase goods or services whose price is equal to the face value of the certificate.

The purchase price of the goods may be less than the deferred price as this represents a trading transaction.

Takaful may be used to cover risk of loss due to injury or death of halal animals. Takaful may also be offered as employee health and accident coverage and pension/401K plans.

Salam may be used to purchase the animal feed and other items.



Quality and quantity should be specified and the commodity should be freely available in the market.

The halal meat business may opt to organise on musharakah or mudharabah basis. Musharakah is a relationship between two parties or more that contribute capital to a business and divide the net profit and loss pro rata.



The Mudharabah is a contract with one party providing 100 per cent of the capital and the other party providing its specialised knowledge to invest the capital and manage the investment project.


If there is a loss, the first partner "rabb-ul-mal" will lose his capital and the other party "mudarib" will lose the time and effort invested in the project.

The profit is usually shared 50-50 or 60-40 for rabb- ul-mal.

The plant may also consider murabahah financing and tawarruq.

Murabahah is a type of sale contract under which payment of all or part of the purchase price is deferred for an agreed period.

The price may be payable by instalments or in one lump sum at an agreed date.

The Islamic bank acquires goods or an asset from a third party and having acquired ownership, sells them onto the end purchaser under a murabahah agreement.

The price payable by the end purchaser will be the original cost price of the goods plus an agreed profit for the bank, which rewards the bank for taking the risk of ownership of the goods.

In tawarruq, a customer buys an asset from an Islamic bank at a marked up price to be paid at a later date and quickly sells the asset to raise cash.

If every Muslim in the world spent US$1 per day on halal food, the total would amount to approximately US$584 billion per year.

There is potential for great correlation between Islamic finance and the halal industry in terms of financing, completing the halalness of the product or service, profit-maximisation, and stabilisation and expansion for both the halal and Islamic finance industries.

Each industry can provide a source of stability for the other.


TheMeatSite News Desk

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