23 years of experience in regulating and developing the Islamic financial system. ii. strong Islamic financial institutions comprising 12 Islamic banks. Of this, 3 are foreign Islamic financial institutions and 7 are Islamic subsidiaries of banking groups. There are also several Islamic windows of conventional banking institutions which are also lead arrangers of Islamic financial instruments. In the takaful industry, there are 9 takaful operators. iii. a strong Islamic capital market with 89 Islamic unit trust funds, 85 percent of Bursa Malaysia's counters are Shariah approved counters and 46 percent of the corporate bond market are Islamic bonds or sukuks. iv. a well established and comprehensive regulatory and Shariah governance framework in accordance with best practices, together with a tax neutrality policy. v.  a comprehensive legal and Shariah infrastructure. vi. well endowed with the critical mass and a wide array of Islamic products and services. vii. Talent development infrastructure. viii. a vibrant and active secondary market trading of the Islamic money and capital markets equipped with the state-of-the-art technology. We are now at the cross-road in the development of Islamic finance. We realise that we are strong at the domestic level, and we now need to strategise to elevate the industry to the next phase of development. During the keynote address yesterday, Governor has launched Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) for the offering of Islamic financial products and services in international currencies from anywhere in Malaysia.

At the same time, we must also allow diversity in Shariah interpretation as to support product innovations to meet the needs of the industry. Over the last two days, we have heard about the need to accelerate talent development, which is key to the future progress of the industry. In this respect, the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance or INCEIF offers the world's first professional certification program in Islamic finance. The response has been over-whelming. To complement talent development, a set of incentives will be formulated to attract the best foreign talents to work in the MIFC. The adoption of best practices in the regulatory standard by the Islamic financial institutions will be key in sustaining their soundness and resilience. In this regard, IFSB has developed the required regulatory and prudential standards, in which Malaysia will adopt these standards, and continue to provide the leadership in the implementation of these standards. Malaysia's strength in the Islamic capital market can be further leveraged upon by issuers and investors as a platform for origination, trading and distribution of Islamic financial instruments. The benefits of being a financial centre are tremendous. Besides enhancing services sector contribution to GDP, it will create job opportunities, contribute towards promoting greater cross border investment and trade flows, better quality and diversified products and services, and strengthen further the global economic and financial inter-linkages among countries. Malaysia has come a long way since it first introduced Islamic finance in the 1980s. We are now embarking on the next stage of development.