These include: supply chain finance, which enables businesses particularly SMEs, to leverage on the creditworthiness of their anchor suppliers or buyers who are mainly MNCs, to obtain financing at a more affordable rate which may not be possible through direct approach with banks; coverage in takaful products at competitive prices, which for example include coverage for loss or damage to goods shipped on all types of conveyances from manufacturing to trading; the Investment Account Platform or IAP, established by six Islamic banks in 2016 as the world’s first Islamic bank-intermediated fintech platform that offers more competitive financing terms and variations in financing structures for ventures. To date, the IAP has supported eight ventures worth RM161.3 million; and sukuk as an alternative form of financing for businesses, such as green sukuk for green 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  businesses. To date, five green sukuk have been issued by Malaysian solar companies to finance solar power projects, amounting to RM866.8 million since July 2017. These are but a flavour of what Islamic finance can offer and I am sure you will hear about many more today. National policy for nurturing SMEs At the national level, the government is indeed supportive of the role of Islamic finance as an important tool to assist businesses and SMEs to flourish. Developing Islamic finance and the growth of SMEs are key national strategies, as reflected in the recent 2019 Budget. The SME Shariah-Compliant Financing Scheme of RM1 billion was established to strengthen SMEs.
But the extraordinary stability of the past decade may have given people an exaggerated idea of what to expect of monetary policy. While the Bank can deliver low inflation, we cannot reliably deliver rock steady growth in output and employment, still less falling unemployment. Whether or not that happens depends on events in the wider world – what economists like to call ‘shocks’ - and other economic policies, including taxes and regulations. All we can do is try to keep demand growing in line with supply. And in fact, most economists a decade ago would have said that the Great Stability, as we have experienced it in the UK, represented a pretty unlikely set of outcomes. The then Governor, Eddie George, said he hoped that low inflation would contribute to a more stable economy but warned: ‘We cannot hope to achieve that with any great precision’ 2 . The MPC’s formal remit from the Chancellor, originally drafted nearly a decade ago and still in force, seems to be predicated on a more turbulent world. It makes specific allowance for situations in which inflation might be thrown sharply off course. It reads: ‘The framework is based on the recognition that the actual inflation rate will on occasions depart from its target as a result of shocks and disturbances. Attempts to keep inflation at the inflation target in these circumstances may cause undesirable volatility in output.