Islamic finance- growth Nexus : empirical evidence from Malaysia

Abstract

The expanding Islamic financial and banking system, together with the remarkable economic development has drawn the attention to explore the impact of Islamic financial and banking system on economic growth, especially in Malaysia as it has been retaining its position as the leader in Islamic finance as well as maintaining its position to be in the top for the Global Islamic Economy Indicator (GIEI) Score for the 9th consecutive years. Although many challenges have been faced by the Islamic financial sector successfully as time goes by, there are still some issues that need to be improved especially in terms of the legal, supervisory, institutional framework, and the directions for future research by focusing on statistical analysis and economic significance, and its primary objective to serve the society. Therefore, this study intends to examine the link between Islamic financial sector, which includes Islamic Banking (IB), Islamic capital market (ICM), and Takaful sectors, and real economic growth in Malaysia with three specific research objectives. First, this study aims to investigate the Islamic finance (IF)-growth nexus in Malaysia both in short and long-run. Second, this study proposes to analyze whether the introduction of Islamic Financial Services Act (IFSA) 2013 has a significant effect on each of the three sectors of IF (IB, ICM and Takaful) in the short-run and long- run. This study adopts Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method of cointegration for IB and ICM sectors, and Pearson Correlation method for Takaful sector, using the secondary data that are extracted from the official reports. Information from interview session is also shown to support the quantitative analysis. Third, this study seeks to observe whether IF is fulfilling the goals of Islamic economics by adopting the method of Between-Study Analysis and Interview. The findings show that IB sector is linked positively to the real economic growth both in the short and long run, while for ICM sector, it is found that the link between Shari’ah-compliant Securities (SCS) and the real economic growth is negative, while the link between Shari’ah-compliant Market Capitalization (SCMC) and the real economic growth is positive in both short and long run, and the third sector, which is Takaful sector, is found to be positively linked to the real economic growth significantly. On the other hand, it is also shown that IFSA 2013 does assist the IB sector to improve the real economic growth in Malaysia in the long run. Besides, there is also evidence that IFSA 2013 could support inclusive growth in the ICM sector for SCS both in the short run and long run. Meanwhile, for Takaful sector, the positive effect of IFSA is found to be insignificant due to the data limitation. Last but not least, the qualitative results of the study via interviewing 7 experts in the industry have shown that the Islamic financial system has progressed really well to satisfy the Maqasid Shari’ah, especially during COVID-19. However, there is a need for additional metrics to measure economic growth to reflect a fair distribution amongst the society. These findings signify the significance of a refined and conducive regulatory and legal framework in supporting the Malaysian IF industry’s transformation to become a global leader in the field. For the vital contribution of IFSA 2013 to the Malaysian Islamic financial system, it is recommended for policymakers to focus on implementing policies that can further develop the IF’s abilities to enhance the economic growth.