banking licences with up to 100 % foreign ownership would be issued to conduct international business. these initiatives cumulatively have internationalised our islamic financial system in terms of the presence of foreign players and in terms of participation in our financial system. the commodity murabahah house, or the cmh, that is being established today will be an important platform that will further enhance global interlinkages in the international islamic financial system. the cmh is designed to be a multi - currency and multi - commodity exchange - traded platform to facilitate the trading and settlement of commodity which acts as the underlying transaction for liquidity management between islamic financial centres. it is made convenient for worldwide usage as it is an internet based platform – the first of its kind in the world with crude palm oil ( cpo ) as its underlying base commodity. although malaysia already has a well functioning and efficient islamic inter - bank market, the cmh provides a further viable alternative using the commodity murabahah concept. while the cmh will provide another alternative to the already robust liquidity management infrastructure in malaysia, it will also enable liquidity management in the global financial system. the cmh has a vast potential to facilitate liquidity flows from one financial centre to the other. the increased efficiency in the liquidity management across countries will also contribute towards sustaining overall stability of the islamic financial services industry at the international level. in addition to enhancing liquidity management, the cmh will provide an environment for increased innovation in the islamic financial industry whereby the financial institutions will be able to provide a wider range of new financial instruments including deposit, financing, investments and hedging. to evolve malaysia into an international islamic financial hub, malaysia has under the mifc initiative, put in place a facilitative framework for both ringgit and foreign currency denominated sukuk issuance. the recent issuance of the us dollar 1. 5 billion 5 - year petronas emas global sukuk on 12th august marks a new beginning for the foreign currency sukuk market in malaysia. the issue, amidst the challenging global financial markets, was highly successful, attracting significant interest from a wide investor base with asia accounting for 60 percent of the issue. the combined size of the petronas global sukuk and conventional bond issuances amounting to 4. 5 billion us dollars is the largest global issuance in asia ( excluding japan ) for the year. the brief time - to - market for the issuance of the us

to initiatives by individual companies and the entire market, it is important for the public sector to have the perspective of ensuring the formation of fair prices and the stability of financial transactions in financial markets both before and after the discontinuation of libor ( figure 8 ). therefore, with respect to initiatives by individual companies, it is necessary to strongly encourage financial institutions to take specific actions. in this regard, we at the bank of japan, have conducted a joint survey recently with the jfsa regarding financial institutions ′ status of using libor and governance framework. in addition, with respect to market - wide initiatives, it is important for the public sector to concurrently play the role of a coordinator and a facilitator. for the ongoing interest rate benchmark reform, the public sector needs to simultaneously review various frameworks and practices that have been developed based on libor. it also needs to proceed with that complex process while coordinating the different viewpoints of a diverse range of parties. as the central bank and the secretariat of the cross - industry committee on japanese yen interest rate benchmarks, the bank of japan continues to support interest rate benchmark reform from those perspectives while simultaneously cooperating with the jfsa. toward the end of 2021 in taking the various measures mentioned to this point, it is very important for both the private and public sectors to keep in mind the timeline of when the discontinuation of libor is expected ; that is, up to the end of 2021. going forward, given the magnitude of work, including reviewing the operations of individual companies, responding to clients, and reviewing market practices, two years is by no means a long time. in order to accomplish the interest rate benchmark reform by also utilizing the results of past deliberations, it is necessary for all relevant parties in the private and public sectors to steadily implement measures while appropriately cooperating with each other by keeping in mind the limited time until the end of 2021. closing remarks : improving the attractiveness of tokyo ′ s financial markets as explained so far, the private and public sectors must cooperate with each other to seriously tackle the common goal of transitioning to a new framework for the interest rate benchmark that will replace libor. lastly, i would like to discuss what we should aim for by achieving the interest rate benchmark reform through considerable efforts and substantial costs to be borne by the relevant parties, including those of you who are here today. interest rate benchmarks are an important infrastructure with which economic entities