Turkey's Erdoğan urges Muslim world to use Islamic sukuk to finance long-term investments

The future will see the world's interest-based economic system replaced by participation based on risk-sharing, the Turkish president said on Wednesday.

"In this case, it is important to expand the use of products such as [Islamic] sukuk to finance large long-term infrastructure investments," Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a virtual meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC).

A sukuk is an Islamic financial certificate, similar to a bond in Western finance, which complies with Islamic religious law, also known as Sharia.

Saying that COMCEC countries should take active measures to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from harming foreign trade, Erdoğan added: "The steps we will take to boost trade among COMCEC member countries are important."

He urged COMCEC members to "step up unique efforts to ease currency pressure on our economies, including using local currencies for trade."

Turkey has long advocated more use of local currencies for international trade instead of the dollar or euro.

On efforts to coordinate standards for halal products-made in line with Muslim standards-Erdoğan said COMCEC members have been working on this for some time, but have yet to achieve the coordination they want.

"As Islamic countries, the more we produce, the more we strengthen our economies," he stressed.

"We should take steps towards value-added production and trade instead of export structures based on raw materials or semi-finished products," the president added.