for the appointment and re - appointment of shariah committee members. this applies as well for key shariah personnel in islamic financial institutions, including islamic windows. the aim is to ensure shariah advisors and personnel are equipped with the necessary knowledge that 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches transcends across various disciplines including legal, finance and taxation matters. the timeline for compliance will be decided later. my final point is to engage the world more openly. issues of shariah are complex and sometimes difficult to discern. but they are important, and matter very much to a wide range of stakeholders. as imam ash - shafi ’ i reportedly said, “ knowledge is that which benefits, not that which is memorised ” 3. hence, in keeping with the changing landscape of the industry, engaging more openly and transparently about views and decisions will enhance understanding and acceptance. views and opinions are man - made and should be challenged, questioned and debated through civil and intellectual discourse. during the islamic golden age, such discourses and challenging of ideas were commonplace to assess the veracity of knowledge. al haytham, who wrote the influential ‘ book of optics ’, once said : “ the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads.... he should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it.. ” the goal for us today should be to forge greater understanding and acceptance. contentious differences in shariah opinion is a given but it must not hold us back, but rather be resolved through debate and discussion with a view to find truth and justice. in setting an example to inspire such exchanges, beginning january 2018, bank negara malaysia ’ s website will feature an enhanced version of the sac microsite, starting with the bahasa version to provide more detailed disclosure of the sac ’ s works. over the years, the sac has accumulated a treasure trove of knowledge which has been shared through various publications. in this digital age, it is high time that this be made even more accessible to the whole world. this new microsite will among others, serve as a repository for key discussions on fiqh matters and underlying reasoning of shariah rulings. this is expected to promote greater understanding and appreciation of the thought process and rationale in arriving at a ruling by our learned scholars. i trust that this repository of knowledge will encourage

an exogenous impulse or a shock to the interest rate. this means that the interest rate is raised in response to factors other than those that can be explained historically by the other variables in the model. thereafter the model takes over, and the interest rate moves in line with the model ’ s estimated reaction pattern. the effect of an interest rate shock will depend on the variables included in the model, the model ’ s structure and estimation period. the result can be more robust if we use a long time - series in the estimation. on the other hand, changes in monetary policy regimes can influence the results. it may therefore be of greater interest to confine the estimation period to, for instance, the period of inflation targeting. first, i would like to look at the implications of the choice of estimation period for the results. i will then compare the var model with a corresponding interest rate shock in nemo. chart : isolated effect on gdp of an interest rate increase in two different var models in order to further explore the extent to which the estimation period has a bearing on the results, we have estimated var models with successive starting points from 1986 to 19968. each model is quantified on quarterly data up to 2009. in the analysis, the interest rate increases by 1 percentage point and then gradually falls back. the increase in the interest rate will result in a temporary decline in gdp growth. the chart shows the effect in two of the models, one that is estimated from the mid - 1980s and the other where the estimation period starts ten years later. the impact on gdp occurs somewhat earlier, but is a little smaller when we start the estimation period later. this may reflect the change in monetary policy regime during the period or structural changes in the norwegian economy. chart : maximum impact of a 1 percentage point interest rate increase, different estimation periods if we only look at the maximum impact of an interest rate increase in each of the models, we obtain a picture of how this has changed over time. each point in the chart represents the impact on the level of gdp and inflation when the effect of an interest rate increase is strongest in each model ( estimation period ). the charts show that an unexpected change in the key policy rate of 1 percentage point results in a maximum downward shift in gdp of 0. 4 – 0. 7 per cent and a maximum decline in inflation of 0. 2 – 0. 3 percentage point. chart : number of quarters to maximum effect of interest rate change, different estimation periods