Firstly, it enhances the potential for higher global growth, while also contributing towards some rebalancing of the global growth. Secondly, the strengthened international financial linkages allows for greater potential for the diversification of risks. The increase in the Islamic financial products, the growing number of assets classes being offered, the increased cross ownership of assets all have expanded the possibilities for greater diversification of risks and the potential for return. Today, Islamic finance represents a multi-billion dollar industry which has a presence in many countries and more recently, there has been widening participation by established financial centres. There are now more than 200 Islamic financial institutions, some of which are global players, offering an extensive range of Shariah compliant products and services to a broad spectrum of consumers and businesses that transcends beyond the Muslim world. This global forum has aimed to bring together the industry practitioners, issuers and investors, the regulators, scholars as well as those in related services, including the IT services, legal, accounting and auditing professionals and those in human resource development. It is our hope that the deliberations today will play a catalytic role in building greater collective efforts through multistakeholder dialogues and network-building activities whilst discovering opportunities and also improving our understanding on important areas in Islamic finance. Ladies and Gentlemen, As we know today, there are already clusters of cross-border collaborative activities taking place on several fronts that serve to contribute towards increasing the international integration process of Islamic finance.

3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  After all, as moving forward requires the economy to consider not just cutting edge, but also bleeding edge ideas and technologies, we need to start thinking about novel and unconventional approaches. Several questions spring to mind. First, how should the government take calculated policy risks, while managing policy failures? In building pathways to high income, ambitious industrial policies, or “moonshot strategies”, will play a key role. With any policy however, there would be uncertainty and possibility of failure. Development economist, Dani Rodrick, called for effective industrial policy to be less on the ability to pick winners, but on knowing when to cut losses. Too low a failure rate could also mean that we are playing it too safe. The objective, hence, should not be to avoid mistakes, but to minimise the cost of mistakes. This will require the Government to build its capacity to account for and quantify the associated risk within the decision framework. Only then can we make smarter, more intelligent bets to get the most bang for the buck. Second, how can the Government learn and execute better? Focus should be as much on process and governance, as it is on the outcomes. While we have achieved leaps and bounds in economic development since our Independence, past reforms also provide important lessons in areas where we must strive to do better. We have had roughly 60-70 blueprints and masterplans over the years; not all have been executed to their maximum potential.