More institutions are expected to participate later this year. In this space, there are continuing ample and growing opportunities for Islamic finance to tap on as we ramp up in high value-added sub-sectors such as halal pharmaceutical and cosmetics, as highlighted in HDC’s sectoral development roadmap. Islamic finance also is primed to support initiatives under the National Investment Aspiration (NIA). As the new national investment policy strategy, the NIAs aim to increase Malaysia’s capacity to produce more complex and high-value products and create more high-skilled jobs5. This, in turn, will result in Malaysia producing new lines of goods and services beyond the traditional and upstream products, which will require support including in trade financing in developing businesses across these new product supply chains and penetrating new markets. The different nature of these needs, however calls for more well designed solutions that extend beyond readily available products. Conclusion Before I end my remarks, I would like to touch on the importance of calibrating trade finance processes with digitalisation. The World Bank’s Islamic Trade Finance Report recognises this as a priority area and calls for enhancements to online Islamic trade finance supply chain financing, and the use of blockchain technology. Such technological advancements that leverage distributed ledger technology and API-enabled trade finance platform can address long-standing issues in trade finance operations that mainly arise from the voluminous and manual nature of trade finance processes.
However, I call upon the institutions of the Paris financial centre to continue demonstrating prudence and responsibility in their search for client resources. The Banque de France and the Prudential Supervisory Authority will be vigilant in this respect. It is vital that market conditions be fully accounted for in setting the level of interest on financial products, whether offered by banks or life insurers. It is also best if preference is given to the collection of long-term savings that are indispensable for financing the economy. Indeed, I am actively seeking the support of the government with regard to this objective. The Bank will seek to ease the individual adaptations required by these numerous new regulatory frameworks. In particular we will strive to facilitate the management of liquidity and collateral, notably by continuing to support the mobilisation of lending to the economy via refinancing operations with the central bank, but also via markets. In this perspective, and at the initiative of the Banque de France, a Paris financial centre working group has been set up to develop innovative and safe securitisation mechanisms that should allow banks to make better use of the pool of claims on their balance sheets and to strengthen their financing capacities. The Bank will also continue to mobilise all parties concerned, and in particular companies, in order to accelerate and successfully implement France’s migration to SEPA payment instruments that should be finalised by 1 February 2014 for credit transfers and direct debits.