An employee of Bank Negara Indonesia of sharia division, Islamic banking unit, counts Indonesian rupiah from a customer in Jakarta.

MANAMA, Bahrain, Dec. 10--The value of assets managed by Islamic banks will grow 33 percent to $1 trillion by 2010 as more of the world’s Muslims seek financial services that comply with their beliefs, management consultants McKinsey & Co said.
Sales of Islamic bonds, which adhere to the religion’s ban on lending on interest, asset management businesses and new products would be main drivers of growth, McKinsey said in its World Islamic Banking Competitiveness report, Reuters wrote.
“Islamic banks are growing at phenomenal levels, faster than the average banking sector in most geographies,“ it said in the report released on Sunday.
The assets controlled by Islamic banks were worth $750 billion at the end of 2006, McKinsey said.
Islamic banks avoid borrowing or lending on interest. They pay depositors a share of profit and structure their loans as leases or profit-sharing partnerships.
The 14th Annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) opened on Sunday under the patronage of Bahrain Prime Minister Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa.
Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain Rasheed M. Al Maraj welcomed 1,000 delegates from over 35 countries at the grand opening ceremony held at the Gulf International Convention Center in Bahrain,
www.albawaba.com reported.
The conference proceedings began with the high-profile opening session, the Financial and Regulatory Architecture: Enabling Industry Growth & Containing Risks led by Al Maraj.
Governor of the Bank of Indonesia, Burhanuddin Abdullah, continued the discussion and stated, “This occasion is certainly an important stepping-stone, which would contribute in determining our pathway to the future in building a more resilient and prosperous Islamic banking and financial industry. It is clear that the recent developments in the international Islamic banking and financial industry are a reflection of our eagerness to intensify the economic and financial activities under the compliance of Sharia principles.“
The official launch of the WIBC Competitiveness Report 2007/08, opened by Afaq Khan, CEO of Islamic Banking for Standard Chartered Saadiq and conducted by Ozgur Tanrikulu, a Partner with McKinsey and Company, provided an opportunity to assess the key findings of the research program. The key discussion points of the report included an update on the competitive performance of leading Islamic banks, asset management trends, risk management in Islamic banking plus an assessment of the growth potential for Islamic banking in Asia.

BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 10--A joint US-European Union proposal to liberalize trade in green goods and services such as solar panels would boost the availability of technology to battle global warming, a top US trade official said.
Susan Schwab, US trade representative, said Sunday on the sidelines of the U.N. climate change conference in Indonesia that developing countries have an average of 9 percent tariffs on a list of 43 such goods and services, AP reported.
“The question is, how can we do a better job of making those available and ensuring additional uses of climate mitigation technologies?“ Schwab said after a meeting of trade ministers at the conference on Bali island.
Developing country delegates at the assembly have urged wealthy nations to speed the transfer of climate-friendly technologies, which would help them reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases blamed for rising global temperatures.
Tariff cuts, made by the US and EU last week, would not apply to so-called biofuels--something emerging economies such as Brazil had been pushing for. It is not clear how much support the trans-Atlantic offer will garner in the 151-member World Trade Organization.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who also handles trade issues, objected to the proposal at a news conference after the trade meeting in Bali, saying the list of goods was flawed because it omitted ethanol. Ethanol can be used as fuel, and Brazil is the leading exporter.
“This list is incomplete. It won’t do much for climate change. It’s not proven what effects that these goods will have on climate change,“ he said. “The single project whose effect on climate change is already shown and demonstrated, which is ethanol ... isn’t part of the list.“
Amorim said ethanol use over 30 years in Brazil had avoided the emission of 670 million tons of carbon dioxide.
The US-EU proposal would only come into force as part of an overall agreement in the Doha round of trade liberalization talks, which have repeatedly stalled since their inception in Qatar’s capital six years ago.
Washington and Brussels targeted 43 goods with clear environmental benefits, in order to promote their use worldwide and help combat global warming. But earlier this month they rejected a move by Brazil to include biofuels, such as ethanol.

TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec. 10--Libya on Sunday awarded four potentially lucrative gas exploration contracts to fuel giants Shell, Gazprom, Sonatrach and Polski, the first ever given to foreign firms as relations warm between Tripoli and the West.
The biggest award went to Algerian firm Sonatrach in association with Oil India and Indian Oil, which was given four blocks covering 6,934 square kilometers (2,677 square miles), AFP reported.
Russian giant Gazprom was awarded three exploration blocs with a total area of 3,936 square kilometers in the southern Ghadames basin.
Gazprom beat off competition from Gaz de France, Inpex of Japan, Russian rival Lukoil, Britain’s BG and Polski, agreeing to cede 90 percent of its eventual production to Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC).
Anglo-Dutch company Shell was handed a two-block contract to explore a 1,790 square kilometer area in the northern Sirte basin and Polish firm Polski was also awarded a two-block area in the southern Murzak basin.
Shell was awarded its exploration rights following a bid of $93 million and 85 percent of its eventual production.
Sonatrach outbid Gaz de France, BG, Polski and Germany’s RWE and proposed 87 percent of its production go to the NOC.
A total of 35 companies had been pre-selected to bid for the dozen contracts awarded Sunday to explore 41 gas blocks in the Mediterranean, the Sirte basin in the north-central area of the country, Cyrenaica further east and Murzek and Ghadames in the south.
The blocks cover a total of 72,500 square kilometers (almost 28,000 square miles), an area the size of Scotland.
It was the first time Libya invited tenders for natural gas exploration.
Regarding eight as yet unattributed blocks, National Oil Company president Shukri Ghanem said the NOC “will decide next week if it will award licenses or if it will keep them for a second invitation to tender.“
With the end of UN sanctions after Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s dramatic decision in December 2003 to abandon weapons of mass destruction programs, oil and gas exploration has picked up at a frenetic pace.
OPEC member Libya is the African continent’s second largest oil producer at 1.7 million barrels per day. It also has natural gas reserves estimated at 1,314 billion cubic meters (46,403 billion cubic feet).

MUMBAI, India, Dec. 10--India’s top state-run refiner, Indian Oil Corp, will partner Egyptian General Petroleum Corp to jointly build a $9 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in Egypt, a report said, Reuters wrote.
“We have agreed to work out details of the project,“ the Economic Times newspaper quoted Indian Oil’s director for planning and business development, B M Bansal, as saying.
Talks on the size of the refinery, its cost or the location are yet to be finalized, he said.
However, citing unnamed Egyptian officials, the paper said the complex would be built near Gamasa or Port Said at a cost of $9 billion.
State-run Engineers India Ltd (EIL) told reporters on the sidelines of an energy conference in New Delhi that the firm hopes to conduct a feasibility study for the project.
“We have verbally communicated for the feasibility study. It should be of the size of 180,000-300,000 barrel per day refinery and petrochemical project,“ Mukesh Rohatgi, EIL chairman, said.
Rohatgi said the study should be complete within 3-6 months but added EIL had yet to be told formally of the scope of the planned unit.
A spokeswoman for Indian Oil said she could not immediately comment on the report.

China's Finance Minister Xie Xuren

BEIJING, Dec. 10--China’s finance minister said Sunday that Beijing is increasingly concerned over protectionist sentiments in the US Congress, warning legislation targeting Chinese imports would do major damage to trade between the two countries.
Xie Xuren’s comments came just days before the start of high-level meetings with US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials.
China’s massive trade surplus with the US is expected to be a key issue at the talks.
In an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency, Xie said more than 50 bills touching on bilateral trade had been raised in the US Congress in the year to date.
“At present, the tendency within Congress toward protectionism is in fact rather worrying,“ Xie said. Passage of such legislation would “seriously harm China-US trade cooperation, and in the end, harm America’s own interests,“ he said.
China’s trade surplus with the US hit a record level of US$233 billion last year, but looked set to fall this year, according to the finance Ministry figures.
Congress has been demanding the US administration act more forcefully to get China to halt what critics see as unfair trade practices. They contend that China is manipulating its currency, keeping its value low to boost Chinese imports into the United States while making US goods more expensive in China.
However, Xie said no amount of anti-trade sentiment could block the overall trend of further trade development. “China-US bilateral trade cooperation is the major trend and can’t be blocked by any type of static,“ Xie said.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s foreign exchange regulator said on Sunday ahead of cabinet-level talks with the United States.
The ceiling on foreign investment in Chinese securities will be raised to $30 billion from $10 billion, China agreed to raise the cap in May during the last such talks, but there have been no fresh approvals under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) scheme since February when the $10 billion ceiling was reached.
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will lead the US delegation at the next round of the “strategic economic dialogue“ near Beijing next Wednesday and Thursday.
“To further open the country’s capital markets to foreigners, the QFII investment quota will be raised to $30 billion,“ the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement on its Web site, www.safe.gov.cn.

RIYADH,
Saudi Arabia,
Dec. 10--Saudi Arabia is planning a five billion dollar monorail network to transport millions of pilgrims around the Muslim holy sites during the annual hajj pilgrimage, AFP quoted a Saudi daily as reporting on Monday.
The oil-rich desert kingdom is to carry out a feasibility study into the proposed network of five lines linking Muzdalifah, Mina and Arafat, the English-language Arab News reported.
Nearly 2.4 million people flock to the holy sites during the hajj, posing huge logistical and safety problems.
Pilgrims travel to Muzdalifah to collect stones that are used in Mina as part of a ritual stoning of the devil.
The hajj culminates on the holy mount of Arafat, where Prophet Mohammed delivered his final sermon 14 centuries ago in an event which symbolizes the Last Judgment.
This year’s pilgrimage begins later this month and is expected to culminate on Dec. 19 or 20. The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam which all able-bodied Muslims must undertake once in a lifetime if they have the means.

ZURICH, Switzerland, Dec. 10--Swiss bank UBS announced $10 billion in fresh subprime writedowns on Monday.
It also said it had obtained a huge injection of fresh capital from a Singapore government entity and an unnamed Middle East investor, Reuters reported.
USB, which has been severely battered by the US subprime mortgage meltdown, also said it expected to make a fourth-quarter loss, reversing previous guidance, and said it may also register a loss for 2007 as a whole.
UBS said it had made a 13 billion Swiss franc ($11.48 billion) issue of fresh capital, 11 billion francs of which were to be placed with the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and 2 billion francs with a Middle East investor.
A financial source said the Middle East investor was believed to be the government of Oman.
The announcement comes on the eve of an investor day in London on Tuesday at which chief executive officer Marcel Rohner and other top managers are due to address analysts and investors.
The bank also said it would approve the resale of 36.4 million treasury shares previously intended for cancellation, increasing Tier 1 capital by about 2 billion francs.
It also proposed replacing the 2007 cash dividend with a bonus stock issue which would boost Tier 1 capital by 4.4 billion francs.
Together with the capital increase, Tier 1 capital would be raised by a total of 19.4 billion francs, boosting its Tier 1 capital ratio to 12 percent.
The two investors were subscribing to an issue of mandatory convertible notes carrying a coupon of 9 percent until conversion into ordinary shares which must take place within approximately two years of the issue.
The GIC manages Singapore’s foreign reserves.