Dubai: The 10th annual World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) held in Dubai is set to break the London’s record in terms of number of delegates, the chairman of the WIEF foundation said on Tuesday.

The event underway in Dubai was attended by 2,783 delegates from all over the world by the afternoon of October 27, said Tun Musa Hitam.

About 2,800 delegates attended the conference in London last year, while about 2,400 delegates attended the conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2005.

“I’m sure in a few hours it will break the London record,” said Hitam.

There existed so much doubt about the success of the WIEF among the non-Muslim countries about its acceptability, he said.

“The spread worldwide illustrates the widening acceptability not only in the business communities, but significantly among non-Muslim countries, which are participating in our activities,” said Hitam.

Luxembourg along with the United Kingdom have already issued sukuks, and plan to do much more in coming months and years.

Luxembourg, which issued the first euro-denominated sukuk last month, plans to issue more such bonds to match the investor appetite, its finance minister said on Monday.

The €200 million (Dh930.5 million) sukuk issued in September was subscribed two times, of which 61 per cent was allocated to investors in the Middle East.

“The interest for our sukuk has been very high. We are looking into that possibility [issuing more sukuk] of doing it quiet keenly as we are encouraged for this. There seems to be a large appetite for sukuk around the world and Luxembourg considers this to be a very efficient way to diversify,” said Pierre Gramegna, Luxembourg’s minister of finance.

The Islamic banking assets have grown to $2.8 billion (Dh10.3 billion) in June 2014, or 4.4 per cent of the banking asset. The assets are expected to grow between $5-7 billion by 2018.

“The most obvious common denominator is business collaboration for win-win situation hard work, competition yet with collaboration for profits is the way forward,” said Hitam.

Education:

Malaysia, which issued the first sovereign sukuk has made a strategic decision to focus on Islamic Finance with institutions and courses designed to train professionals in this fast growing sector.

“Meeting this objective will require innovative partnership between private sector and education providers, governments and communities,” Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia.

The world’s biggest Islamic debt offering of 2014 from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund pushed the nation’s sukuk sales beyond 50 billion ringgit ($15.4 billion, Dh56.1 billion) for only the second time in 16 years.

Razak’s $444 billion development program contributed 21.2 billion ringgit to the sukuk total this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.