Dubai: The Dubai International Financial Centre, DIFC, hopes to improve its coordination with the UAE Central Bank and the Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (Esca) by setting up a permanent committee which will meet regularly.
“We want to sign an MOU to set up a continuous committee of ourselves though the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), the Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (Esca), and the Central Bank to keep all sides informed on developments and plans,” Eisa Kazim, the Governor of the DIFC told Gulf News.
While the DIFC is a free zone operating in its own legal environment, it is concerned that it works well within the rest of the UAE to that end. “We have a good relationship with the Central Bank, the Ministry of Economy and Esca,” Kazim said in an exclusive interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the DIFC.
He also announced that the DFSA would favour setting up a centralised Sharia board to cover all Islamic institutions operating in the DIFC, in order to increase liquidity in their offering to the market and stop any hint of what he called “regulatory arbitrage”, which he has seen in the local market.
He compared the far more liquid global market for a conventional bond with the limited liquidity possible when a sukuk might be issued by one institution, but other Islamic institutions need to check with their Sharia boards if they can participate. “This problem would be solved by all institutions working under one central board. Centralisation is very important and we hope to have it,” he said.
Kazim was talking on the occasion of the DIFC’s 10th anniversary, and he was proud of its achievements in helping to diversify the expanding Dubai and UAE economy, as well as taking the finance industry’s share of total Dubai GDP from 6 to 7 per cent in 2005 to more than 11 per cent today.
