Small and medium enterprises key to this year’s World Islamic Economic Forum
Small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) and micro financing concepts will dominate the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) agenda when the grouping meets in Jakarta this year. “One of the unique feature of the World Islamic Economic Forum is that we do not touch on religion or politics in our deliberations,” said the Chairman of the World Islamic Economic Forum, Tun Musa Hitam at a media briefing held at the Kingsbury Hotel in Colombo last Friday in connection with the WIEF to be held on August 2-4. He said the WIEF, now in its 12th year, has been accepted and recognised by the world at large irrespective of people’s religious inclinations.
“We had around 2700 businessmen attending our London conference three years back,” the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia said. Although the WIEF had 400 businessmen initially there are now over 2500 businessmen affiliated to the organisation. “WIEF’s policy is to cater to the Small and Medium Enterprises and Micro level businesses at grass-root level to enable them to grow.” Meanwhile WIEF’s inclusion of micro businesses will be an important feature at the Jakarta conference. Meanwhile those who like to attend the conference can log into the website www.wief.org to obtain further information. We do not ask what your religion is to be a participant at the WIEF forum.
In fact 50 per cent of the participants come from non-Muslim countries with the total participants coming from 100 countries. There are tremendous opportunities for Sri Lankan businessmen who participate at the WIEF,” added Mr. Musa Hitam. He said a Sri Lanka businesswomen who participated at the WIEF conference last time has improved her business in selling her merchandise. He said as a student leader he visited Sri Lanka during the time when S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was the Prime Minister. The WIEF Chairman handed over an invitation to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to attend during his visit. WIEF’s Managing Director Datuk Syed Bakar Almohdzar said that a number of Sri Lankans have agreed to attend the conference.