The Malta Financial Services Authority is following developments with regard to the issuance of sukuk on international markets. This is a relatively-new financial instrument which is still developing even in the Gulf countries where it originated.

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said this in reply to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Helena Dalli, who had commented that nothing seemed to have come out of a promised consultation document by the MFSA in 2008 and asked what had become of the project.

Minister Fenech explained that, of its very nature, sukuk involved some form of participation by investors holding particular assets and in the income derived from such assets. This was because sukuk bonds could not yield dividends like conventional bonds.

The issuance of a sukuk by the Maltese government would therefore also imply some form of transfer or participation in the title of public assets on the part of international financial institutions investing therein. This meant that such issuance would require economic circumstances that would justify financial instruments of this nature.