into the emerging markets. additionally, there are opportunities for ethical investments as more than 80 % of equities listed on the malaysian stock exchange are shariah compliant. as one strategy to enhance cross - border financial activities, turkish banks and relevant entities might wish to consider being members of bursa suq al sila ’ to facilitate liquidity management in the islamic financial market. the bursa suq al - sila ’ is the world ’ s first end - to - end islamic multi - currency commodity trading platform to enhance liquidity management for islamic financial institutions. this fully - electronic platform facilitates sukuk structuring, islamic financing and investment transactions including inter - bank placements and customer deposits, by applying the concept of murabaha and tawarruq. since its establishment in 2009, 23 commodity trading participants from malaysia, the middle east and europe have been registered in bursa suq al - sila ’, contributing to the growth in its trading volume where 1370 trades were recorded in q1 2011 with a total value of usd18 billion as compared to 728 trades in the final quarter of 2010 that totalled to an estimated usd11 billion. thirdly, opportunities to collaborate in the area of islamic fund management. following the launch of the first participation bank index by the istanbul stock exchange earlier this year, the investment products introduced in the turkish market have been expanded to include islamic equity funds and products. through collaboration and strategic alliances between malaysian islamic fund management companies and the participation banks in turkey, the development and distribution of shariah compliant funds across borders could be made possible and new investment options to divest the savings of retail clients, as well as in the bis central bankers ’ speeches development of investment strategies to meet the needs of high net - worth individuals or sovereign funds. fourthly, partnership in innovation – where the malaysian and turkish financial community could jointly develop innovative products and investment instruments, provide consultation and advisory services on complex legal, accounting, tax and shariah matters as well as developing human talent to support the development of islamic finance. joint shariah research could also be conducted with international shariah research academy, dedicated research in applied islamic finance based in kuala lumpur. and finally, on the education and research front, possible collaboration can be explored between the international centre of education in islamic finance or inceif and turkish universities to give opportunities for turkish students to enrol in professional and postgraduate programs. students from turkey intending to deepen their knowledge

of npl secondary markets across the euro area, in other words, that npls is not only a greek problem, but it is also a concern to other south european countries, ` 2 including cyprus, italy, portugal, etc. my focus will then be the recent developments in tackling the greek non - performing loans problem including the two recent systemic proposals, one by us at the bank and one by the hfsf. 2. npls : the broader context across the european banking sector a. recent developments npl ratios continued to decline last year across the european union, confirming the overall trend of improvement over recent years. the latest figures show that the gross npl ratio for all eu banks further declined to 3. 4 % ( q3 2018 ), to the lowest level since 2014, indicating that the npl ratio is approaching pre - crisis levels again ( chart 2 ). the coverage ratio has also further improved and has risen to 46 % ( q3 2018 ), up 3 percentage points since 2014. chart 2. eu bank total non - performing loans source : eba, risk dashboard, data as of q3 2018. however, the situation continues to differ significantly between member states as 12 eu member states have npl ratios of below 3 %, while there are still some with considerably higher ratios – 9 member states have ratios above 5 % ( chart 3 ). in member states with relatively high npl ratios, there is encouraging and sustained progress in most cases ` 3 due to a combination of policy actions and the growth impact. for instance, in cyprus, npls have continued to fall since the end of 2015 with the npl ratio around 34 % and are expected to decline more sharply this year. in italy, where the npl ratio is currently around 9. 7 %, the securitisation scheme supported by state guarantees ( known as gacs ) was introduced in 2016 and extended for another six months in september 2018. several other market infrastructure initiatives are also helpful towards tackling npls. for example, in portugal that has an npl ratio of 12. 4 %, initiatives targeted at promoting smooth coordination among creditors ( to accelerate credit restructuring, npl sales, etc. ) are a welcome addition to the existing policy mix. chart 3. npl ratios in eu member states source : eba, risk dashboard, data as of q3 2018. in this context, last december, the european council presidency and the european parliament agreed on a new framework for banks