THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM IN
CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC THOUGHT
(SISTEM EKONOMI MENURUT PEMIKIRAN ISLAM KONTEMPORER)
Sejak akhir tahun 1940, khususnya pada pertengahan tahun 1960 banyak sekali selebaran berupa pamflet, artikel dan buku yang memperlihatkan kecenderungan meningkatnya bentuk kumpulan tulisan tentang sesuatu yang sekarang dikenal dengan istilah Ekonomi Islam. Literatur tersebut, sebagaimana dinyatakan oleh para ahli yang menyebut dirinya dengan Ahli Ekonomi Islam, dimaksudkan sebagai format cetak biru sistem ekonomi yang sesuai dengan sumber-sumber Islam yang asli. Adapun dasar gagasan utama dari sistem tersebut adalah bahwa setiap individu dalam melaksanakan aktrifitas ekonominya senantiasa disesuaikan dengan tatanan norma perilaku yang bersumber dari al-Qur’an dan al-Sunnah. Sedangkan dua dasar gagasan utama lain yang ditawarkan adalah zakat -sejenis pajak yang dianggap sebagai dasar kebijakan fiskal dalam Islam-, dan larangan bunga (riba) yang dianggap sebagai centerpiece (titik sentral) kebijakan moneter dalam Islam. Dan sebagian besar ahli ekonomi islam banyak mencurahkan pemikirannya ke dalam tiga hal tersebut –yaitu norma perilaku, zakat dan larangan bunga- sebagai sokoguru (pilar) sitem ekonomi islam.
Ada beberapa orang pengamat telah menyatakan keberatannya bahwa klaim dan rancangan para ahli ekonomi islam hanya berbasis pada wahyu Tuhan yang tidak terbantahkan, dan yang demikian telah dibantah oleh Timur Kuran dengan menyatakan bahwa para ahli ekonomi Islam sebagaimana halnya dengan para ilmuwan sosial sekuler, senantiasa membangun pemikiran-pemikiran yang ditunjang atas dasar logika, teori keilmuan dan bukti-bukti empiris. Maka tidak benar, jika semua konsep pemikiran ekonomi islam yang telah dirancang oleh para ilmuwan muslim hanya semata-mata didasarkan pada wahyu Tuhan tanpa ditopang dengan logika, teori keilmuan ataupun bukti-bukti empiris.
NORMA-NORMA TINGKAH LAKU
Dalam kerangka pikir sistem ekonomi islam, setiap individu senantiasa diarahkan untuk berperilaku sesuai dengan norma-norma tingkah laku yang bersumber dari al-Qur’an dan al-Sunnah. Pendidikan islam telah menjamin standar istimewa perilaku setiap orang dengan beberapa norma aturan yang cenderung dipaksakan, utamanya adalah yang didasarkan pada suara hati (kesadaran) setiap individu yang sesungguhnya. Aturan prinsip dari norma-norma tersebut adalah membentuk setiap individu sebagai anggota masyarakat muslim menjadi homo islamicus (manusia yang islami), yaitu memiliki tanggungjawab sosial dan berjiwa altruistik (senantiasa mengutamakan orang lain). Sikap dzolim dan sikap tamaknya homo economicus (manusia ekonomi) para ahli ekonomi neoklasik tidak serupa dengan sikap kedermawanan homo islamicus dalam melindungi dan memelihara keinginan seseorang dari godaan dan bujukan orang lain. Oleh karenanya, Afzal-ur-Rahman, pengarang buku “A Trilogy on The Islamic System” menyatakan bahwa norma-norma atau aturan-aturan Islam telah memberikan solusi praktis dalam menghadapi problematika ekonomi modern.
Norma-norma Islam di bidang ekonomi dapat dikelompokkan ke dalam dua kategori, yaitu norma produksi, termasuk di dalamnya aktifitas perniagaan dan norma konsumsi. Adapun mengenai kategori pertama, sistem Islam telah menjelaskan bahwa seorang muslim bebas berproduksi dan berniaga untuk mendapatkan keuntungan pribadi, namun kebebasan yang diberikan bukan tanpa batas melainkan harus senantiasa mempertimbangkan kepentingan orang lain. Di samping itu, yang bersangkutan juga dituntut sedini mungkin untuk tidak berlaku sewenang-wenang dalam usahanya. Artinya harus senantiasa memperhatikan upah yang adil bagi pekerja, harga yang rasional dan keuntungan yang normal, dan artinya juga yang bersangkutan dilarang melakukan tindakan spekulasi dan monopoli atau melakukan transaksi-transaksi lain seperti kontrak asuransi atau transaksi lain yang tidak jelas yang mengandung unsur perjudian, ketidakpastian dan eksploitasi.
Sedang dalam hal aturan aktifitas konsumsi, setiap individu muslim dibatasi oleh tiga hal, yaitu pertama, setiap individu muslim tidak boleh melakukan aktifitas pemanfaatan sumberdaya terlarang (baca : berbuat maksiat) seperti perzinaan atau komoditas lain seperti anggur yang mana kesemuanya dianggap terlarang oleh agama; kedua, setiap individu muslim harus bersikap hemat dan tidak berlebih-lebihan, karena salah satu dampak yang ditimbulkan dari perilaku hemat dalam mengkonsumsi adalah eliminasi problematika kelangkaan yang langsung dapat menurunkan agregat permintaan dan di sisi lain dapat mencegah terjadinya inflasi; ketiga, setiap individu muslim harus dapat bersikap dermawan terhadap sesama anggota masyarakat muslim lainnya yang kurang beruntung (baca : kaum dhu’afa). Dalam hal ini, seorang ahli ekonomi islam telah memberikan catatan khusus, bahwa idealnya dari sikap tersebut bukan hanya terletak pada pemberian dari mereka yang memililki kelebihan…penghasilan daripada pengeluarannya melainkan juga semangat untuk sama-sama berkorban dan saling berbagi atas apa yang dimiliki jika ada yang lebih membutuhkan.
Singkatnya adalah bahwa prinsip mendasar keseluruhan bentuk norma adalah menghidupkan sikap altruisme, karena segala problema sosial akan dapat dipecahkan manakala setiap individu dapat mendahulukan kepentingan umum daripada kepentingan pribadinya.
ZAKAT
Aspek mendasar dari adanya pemberlakuan kewajiban zakat sebagaimana dinyatakan oleh para ahli ekonomi islam adalah bahwa zakat diambilkan dari sebagian harta kekayaan dan sumber penghasilan untuk menjaga stabilitas ekonomi. Dalam prakteknya, penerapan zakat ini dibarengi pula dengan pemberlakuan berbagai macam pajak seperti ushr, dan lainnya yang dikumpulkan dengan menggunakan beberapa istilah.
Adapun harta kekayaan yang dikenai kewajiban zakat adalah terdiri dari barang logam berharga dan ternak dengan nisab (ketentuan minimum) yang berbeda. Sedangkan orang-orang yang berhak memperoleh zakat ada beberapa kategori, yaitu kaum fakir, miskin, pengangguran, anak yatim piatu, budak, musafir, orang yang terlilit hutang, muallaf dan amil.
Fungsi zakat sangat dominan dalam mempengaruhi penghasilan masyarakat dan menjadi pusat layanan jaminan sosial. Lain daripada itu, zakat juga dapat merangsang permintaan selama para ashnaf (yang menerima zakat) relatif dapat membatasi kecenderungan hatinya dalam mengkonsumsi. Dalam hal ini pula, zakat dapat dijadikan sebagai pajak alternatif, hanya saja para ahli ekonomi islam memandang bahwa yang demikian kurang tepat karena zakat dominan dengan aspek fitrah agama. Dan dalam hal ini Afza-ur Rahman berpendapat bahwa pada kenyataannya zakat dibayarkan adalah untuk mencari ridho Allah semata sehingga mereka dapat memanfaatkan hartanya dan meningkatkan daya produktifitasnya dalam berusaha dengan sebaik-baiknya sehingga jika mereka dapat memiliki harta kekayaan yang mencukupi maka mereka tidak akan lalai membayar zakat sebagai ungkapan syukur kepada Allah atas nikmat yang telah diberikan.
LARANGAN BUNGA (RIBA)
Sebagaimana kita ketahui, sepanjang sejarah, permasalahan institusi bunga sebagai sumber potensial masih menjadi perdebatan di mana-mana, bahkan sampai detik ini juga. Dunia Barat dengan kecerdikannya telah memisahkan kedudukan moral dengan bidang ekonomi dan mempergunakan jasa bunga. Dan sekarang, penerapan konsep bunga telah meluas dan bersifat permanen, menjadi bagian yang tidak terpisahkan dari sistem ekonomi global, meskipun banyak hal-hal controversial yang ditimbulkan dalam mengatasi factor yang menentukan di bidang perekonomian sehingga dapat menjaga optimalisasi nilai harga.
Dalam hal ini, sekolah-sekolah ekonomi islam lebih banyak memiliki pandangan bahwa konsep bunga adalah bukan sesuatu yang tidak dapat dihindari dan bukan tidak dapat dimusnahkan, dan al-Qur’an secara tegas melarang bunga. Ada beberapa masalah yang timbul berkaitan dengan hal bunga, antara lain adalah adanya perolehan uang atau modal tanpa adanya usaha, proses pemindahan harta kekayaan dari si miskin kepada si kaya melalui penambahan yang tidak berimbang dalam distribusi kekayaan dan bunga telah merubah perilaku seseorang menjadi cenderung mencintai uang secara berlebihan serta gemar menimbun harta sehingga menjadi orang yang egois, keras hati, kikir dan berpikiran sempit.
Lain daripada itu, bentuk keburukan lain yang ditimbulkan oleh konsep bunga adalah terampasnya akses masyarakat dalam bekerja, maraknya usaha-usaha kaum lintah darat (rentenir) dan menyebabkan dunia perbankan melakukan tindakan-tindakan yang tidak produktif dalam penggunaan modal.
BEBERAPA KRITIK DAN SARAN DARI TIMUR KURAN
Dari beberapa tulisan Timur Kuran tentang tiga pilar utama dalam sistem ekonomi Islam, yaitu norma-norma perilaku, zakat dan larangan bunga (riba) ada beberap kritik dan saran yang patut kami sampaikan, antara lain adalah sebagai berikut :
A. Norma-norma Perilaku :
1. Implikasi norma-norma dalam sistem islam cenderung mendua dalam beberapa sumber tekstualnya yang sering dijadikan sandaran dalam tataran praksis, hal ini disebabkan adanya perbedaan interpretasi terhadap norma-norma yang relevan dalam suatu kondisi dan ketidakjelasan norma yang baku telah mempengaruhi sikap dan persepsi mereka ketika terjadi perubahan sewaktu-waktu. Oleh karenanya harus ada rancang bangun prinsip-prinsip keadilan yang sama dan efisien berikut aplikasinya;
2. Penerapan norma-norma islam dalam masyarakat modern harus senantiasa memperhatikan hubungan timbal balik antara ukuran besar-kecilnya komunitas dan efektifitas norma altruisme. Untuk itulah diperlukan adanya rintisan pembentukan jaringan tim kerja yang solid dalam membangun tatanan dan jalinan antara daerah-daerah kediaman masyarakat yang tersebar luas dengan memulai dari masing-masing individunya;
3. Meningkatkan peran negara dalam penerapan dan sosialiasasi norma-norma sistem ekonomi islam, khususnya dalam melegitimasi kegiatan-kegiatan bisnis yang sesuai dengan syari’at atau yang bertentangan dengan syari’at.
B. Kewajiban Zakat :
1. Distribusi zakat bukan dari orang miskin kepada orang kaya;
2. Cakupan zakat sangat terbatas, hanya sesuai pada zaman Rasulullah saw. Padahal kehidupan perekonomian senantiasa tumbuh dan berkembang, maka penerapan kewajiban zakat harus dapat mencapai seluruh sumber penghasilan yang riil di kalangan masyarakat dan tidak terbatas pada apa yang telah ditentukan oleh kitab-kitab fikih terdahulu, artinya ada ijtihad tentang harta yang dikenai kewajiban zakat selain dari yang sudah ada;
3. Nisab zakat sebaiknya dengan prosentase uang, studi kasus di negara Malaysia dan Arab Saudi.
C. Larangan Bunga :
1. Larangan bunga dapat diterapkan secara efektif di kalangan komunitas yang besar dan heterogen;
2. Penerapan pola hitung bagi hasil melalui prinsip mudharabah sebagai alternatif bank yang meniadakan bunga;
3. Setiap ahli ekonomi islam harus mampu menjabarkan secara kontekstual isi kandungan al-Qur’an sebagai kitab prinsip-prinsip moral dalam Islam;
4. Harus ada keseriusan dari kalangan ahli ekonomi islam dalam menggali cetak biru nilai-nilai ekonomi islam yang terkandung dalam al-Qur’an dan al-Sunnah kemudian direalisasikan secara komprehensif dalam kerangka ekonomi.
Pilkada Jambi dan harapan masyarakat miskin kota Jambi
Pilkada 2005 dan harapan kaum miskin di perkotaan Jambi.
oleh :Sucipto, MA
Pilkada walikota jambi akan telah dimulai, bagaimanapun kaum-kaum politisi mulai melakukan gerilya politik bervarian, mulai dari medesak untuk bersumpah bagi siapa yang terlibat dalam team sampai ke para voter-voter yang akan meilih nantinya.. tetapi tulisan ini akan melihat the other side of interest dari masyarakat jambi yang masih perlu untuk di kembangan.
Tulisan pheni khalid tentang polisi cepek (2001) yang menginsipirasi tulisan ini, Sopir angkot adalah sebuah pekerjaan di sector informal, pekerjaan ini yang dalam kesehariannya lebih ditujukan pada pemenuhan kebutuhan hidupnya.
Hampir dapat dipastikan bahwa pembicaraan tentang sopir angkot sering dikaitkan dengan kemiskinan. Dengan kata lain, potensi ekonomi mereka lemah dan kurang mempunyai kemampuan untuk memperbaiki kondisi dan lingkungan hidup. Ada kecendrungan mereka pasrah serta apatis menghadapi masa depan dan menyerah pada nasib (lewis, 1969). Oleh karena itu, dalam perencanaan penataan ruang perkotaan keberadaan mereka cenderung diabaikan, sehingga kepentingan mereka sering dikorbankan untuk kepentingan masyarakat kota yang lain.
Kaum miskin di kota bekerja keras, mempunyai aspirasi tentang kehidupan yang baik dan motivasi untuk memperbaiki nasib. Upaya yang mereka lakukan adalah menciptakan lapangan pekerjaan sendiri dan berusaha memperbaiki nasib dengan berupaya beralih dari satu pekerjaan ke pekerjaan lain (Sethuraman, 1981: 198; breman, 1985: 1740). Golongan miskin, meskipun sebagian besar mencari nafkah di sector informal, penghasilan keluarga mereka tidak jauh berbeda dengan kelompok bawah pekerja sektor formal. Atas dasar pandangan ini maka potensi ekonomi mereka perlu dipertimbangkan dalam proses pembangunan perkotaan.
Struktur Pekerjaan.
Pekerjaan merupakan variabel paling sulit diterangkan dan dikelompokkan karena begitu beranekaragam, terutama bagi masyarakat miskin yang urban di perkotaan.
Ada dua hal yang perlu dijelaskan dalam tulisan ini dengan mengklasifikasi pekerjaan. Pertama, klasifikasi ISCO tidak membedakan antara pegawai negeri dan pegawai swasta untuk jenis pekerjaan yang sama. Kedua, status pekerjaan diperhatikan secara khusus dalam analisis. Dalam hal ini dibedakan antara mereka yang bekerja untuk pemerintah atau perusahaan.
Sopir taksi dan sopir angkot (yang bekerja untuk seorang majikan dengan system pembayaran berdasarkan setoran) dan sopir mobil, bis atau truk yang bekerja untuk perusahaan dengan gaji yang dibayar menurut setiap perjalanan atau secara tetap setiap minggu atau bulan. Kedua kelompok sopir ini diduga mempunyai tingkat dan stabilitas penghasilan serta jam kerja yang berbeda. Sopir angkot agak cocok dikelompokkan sebagai sector informal daripada formal. Dapat ditambahkan bahwa karena pentingnya tukang ojek di kota-kota, kelompok ini diberikan kode khusus sebagai pekerja angkutan.
Masalah social-ekonomi sopir
Sebuah tradisi yang selalu dirasakan dalam dunia sopir, dimana komunitas sopir ini lebih suka berkumpul dalam lingkup etnis masing-masing, sifat kedesaannya yang dibangun membuat mereka sering tertutup dengan masyarakat lain, pergaulan atas dasar kepentingan ekonomi semata bila mereka bergaul dengan kelompok yang lain.
Kaum miskin di perkotaan biasanya timbul, tumbuh dan berkembang disebabkan secara politik terpinggirkan, seringkali mereka dianggap sebagai sebuah penyangga dalam system kekuasaan, bangunan sistem jauh sekali dari nilai nilai kemanusian namun terkadang apakah dapat dianggap adil jika kita telah memberi 0,00..% kekuasaan dan kekayaan kita, jauh lebih kecil nilainya dari apa yang pernah kita dapatkan dari mereka, dan pendapatan itupun terkadang kita lupa.
Dampak industrialisasi di pedesaan beberapa decade ini membantu akselarisasi urbanisasi, akan juga berpengaruh pada pembentukan struktur ruang kerja informal tidak sah dengan peningkatan ruang kerja tersebut telah melampaui batas dan mengkhawatirkan.
Peningkatan untuk beberapa tahun terakhir ini, mengakibatkan pada permintaan bursa kerjanya, yang dalam hal ini telah menciptakan kesulitan yang mendalam bagi pemerintah dalam menentukan kebijakan sector ini. Kesulitan ini berkaitan masalah penangganan dengan pendekatan memberikan peluang kerja, PKT, JPS dan maupun dari instansi-instansi social lainnya ternyata belum mampu menciptakan bursa kerja informal baru yang sah.
Apalagi berkenaan dengan upaya pengembangan dan penguatan masyarakat, lemahnya pilihan taktis dan strategis dalam upaya pemecahan problem kaum miskin di perkotaan, sehingga yang terjadi justru penegakan kepentingan elit dan lebih mengejar target sisal-ekonomi-politik saja dan pemecahan masalahpun terkesan setengah hati.
Kaum-kaum miskin di perkotaan, dengan beberapa masalah, cita-cita atau impian mereka, di antara masalah dan impian itu adalah ;
1. Kelembagaan di tingkat mereka yang masih lemah dengan kemampuan personal yang belum mengerti arah, tujuan, harapan dan cita-cita hidup dan sulit mengangkat martabat dan status social mereka.
2. Kaum miskin kota belum mampu mandiri untuk mengangkat status social-ekonomi mereka sehingga cenderung ketergantungan pada pihak-pihak pemilik modal, sedangkan para pemilik modal memiliki kecenderungan mendiskriminasi, melecehkan, memaksa yang jauh dari nilai-nilai kemitraan dan kemanusian dimana yang seharusnya antara pemilik modal dan pihak pekerja adalah mitra.
3. Kebutuhan akan Penguatan komunitas secara lembaga dan personal bertujuan agar di masa yang akan datang masalah-masalah diskriminasi kebijakan yang terjadi di komunitas ini akan berubah dan masyarakat miskin di perkotaan bisa berdaya dan mandiri.
Masyarakat miskin diperkotaan itu unik dengan berbagai problematika sosialnya, perlu untuk dikupas akar masalah dan merumuskan solusi terbaik bagi kesejahteraan mereka, mengembangkan system nilai solidaritas sosial sebagai agenda terpenting para candidat yang terpilih nantinya pasca pilkada.
Pasca Pilkada ini diharapkan dapat memberi nuansa baru dalam gerakan pemberdayaan masyarakat akar rumput, lihat saja salah satu yang kita anggap masyarakat akar rumput yaitu komunitas sopir angkot.
oleh :Sucipto, MA
Pilkada walikota jambi akan telah dimulai, bagaimanapun kaum-kaum politisi mulai melakukan gerilya politik bervarian, mulai dari medesak untuk bersumpah bagi siapa yang terlibat dalam team sampai ke para voter-voter yang akan meilih nantinya.. tetapi tulisan ini akan melihat the other side of interest dari masyarakat jambi yang masih perlu untuk di kembangan.
Tulisan pheni khalid tentang polisi cepek (2001) yang menginsipirasi tulisan ini, Sopir angkot adalah sebuah pekerjaan di sector informal, pekerjaan ini yang dalam kesehariannya lebih ditujukan pada pemenuhan kebutuhan hidupnya.
Hampir dapat dipastikan bahwa pembicaraan tentang sopir angkot sering dikaitkan dengan kemiskinan. Dengan kata lain, potensi ekonomi mereka lemah dan kurang mempunyai kemampuan untuk memperbaiki kondisi dan lingkungan hidup. Ada kecendrungan mereka pasrah serta apatis menghadapi masa depan dan menyerah pada nasib (lewis, 1969). Oleh karena itu, dalam perencanaan penataan ruang perkotaan keberadaan mereka cenderung diabaikan, sehingga kepentingan mereka sering dikorbankan untuk kepentingan masyarakat kota yang lain.
Kaum miskin di kota bekerja keras, mempunyai aspirasi tentang kehidupan yang baik dan motivasi untuk memperbaiki nasib. Upaya yang mereka lakukan adalah menciptakan lapangan pekerjaan sendiri dan berusaha memperbaiki nasib dengan berupaya beralih dari satu pekerjaan ke pekerjaan lain (Sethuraman, 1981: 198; breman, 1985: 1740). Golongan miskin, meskipun sebagian besar mencari nafkah di sector informal, penghasilan keluarga mereka tidak jauh berbeda dengan kelompok bawah pekerja sektor formal. Atas dasar pandangan ini maka potensi ekonomi mereka perlu dipertimbangkan dalam proses pembangunan perkotaan.
Struktur Pekerjaan.
Pekerjaan merupakan variabel paling sulit diterangkan dan dikelompokkan karena begitu beranekaragam, terutama bagi masyarakat miskin yang urban di perkotaan.
Ada dua hal yang perlu dijelaskan dalam tulisan ini dengan mengklasifikasi pekerjaan. Pertama, klasifikasi ISCO tidak membedakan antara pegawai negeri dan pegawai swasta untuk jenis pekerjaan yang sama. Kedua, status pekerjaan diperhatikan secara khusus dalam analisis. Dalam hal ini dibedakan antara mereka yang bekerja untuk pemerintah atau perusahaan.
Sopir taksi dan sopir angkot (yang bekerja untuk seorang majikan dengan system pembayaran berdasarkan setoran) dan sopir mobil, bis atau truk yang bekerja untuk perusahaan dengan gaji yang dibayar menurut setiap perjalanan atau secara tetap setiap minggu atau bulan. Kedua kelompok sopir ini diduga mempunyai tingkat dan stabilitas penghasilan serta jam kerja yang berbeda. Sopir angkot agak cocok dikelompokkan sebagai sector informal daripada formal. Dapat ditambahkan bahwa karena pentingnya tukang ojek di kota-kota, kelompok ini diberikan kode khusus sebagai pekerja angkutan.
Masalah social-ekonomi sopir
Sebuah tradisi yang selalu dirasakan dalam dunia sopir, dimana komunitas sopir ini lebih suka berkumpul dalam lingkup etnis masing-masing, sifat kedesaannya yang dibangun membuat mereka sering tertutup dengan masyarakat lain, pergaulan atas dasar kepentingan ekonomi semata bila mereka bergaul dengan kelompok yang lain.
Kaum miskin di perkotaan biasanya timbul, tumbuh dan berkembang disebabkan secara politik terpinggirkan, seringkali mereka dianggap sebagai sebuah penyangga dalam system kekuasaan, bangunan sistem jauh sekali dari nilai nilai kemanusian namun terkadang apakah dapat dianggap adil jika kita telah memberi 0,00..% kekuasaan dan kekayaan kita, jauh lebih kecil nilainya dari apa yang pernah kita dapatkan dari mereka, dan pendapatan itupun terkadang kita lupa.
Dampak industrialisasi di pedesaan beberapa decade ini membantu akselarisasi urbanisasi, akan juga berpengaruh pada pembentukan struktur ruang kerja informal tidak sah dengan peningkatan ruang kerja tersebut telah melampaui batas dan mengkhawatirkan.
Peningkatan untuk beberapa tahun terakhir ini, mengakibatkan pada permintaan bursa kerjanya, yang dalam hal ini telah menciptakan kesulitan yang mendalam bagi pemerintah dalam menentukan kebijakan sector ini. Kesulitan ini berkaitan masalah penangganan dengan pendekatan memberikan peluang kerja, PKT, JPS dan maupun dari instansi-instansi social lainnya ternyata belum mampu menciptakan bursa kerja informal baru yang sah.
Apalagi berkenaan dengan upaya pengembangan dan penguatan masyarakat, lemahnya pilihan taktis dan strategis dalam upaya pemecahan problem kaum miskin di perkotaan, sehingga yang terjadi justru penegakan kepentingan elit dan lebih mengejar target sisal-ekonomi-politik saja dan pemecahan masalahpun terkesan setengah hati.
Kaum-kaum miskin di perkotaan, dengan beberapa masalah, cita-cita atau impian mereka, di antara masalah dan impian itu adalah ;
1. Kelembagaan di tingkat mereka yang masih lemah dengan kemampuan personal yang belum mengerti arah, tujuan, harapan dan cita-cita hidup dan sulit mengangkat martabat dan status social mereka.
2. Kaum miskin kota belum mampu mandiri untuk mengangkat status social-ekonomi mereka sehingga cenderung ketergantungan pada pihak-pihak pemilik modal, sedangkan para pemilik modal memiliki kecenderungan mendiskriminasi, melecehkan, memaksa yang jauh dari nilai-nilai kemitraan dan kemanusian dimana yang seharusnya antara pemilik modal dan pihak pekerja adalah mitra.
3. Kebutuhan akan Penguatan komunitas secara lembaga dan personal bertujuan agar di masa yang akan datang masalah-masalah diskriminasi kebijakan yang terjadi di komunitas ini akan berubah dan masyarakat miskin di perkotaan bisa berdaya dan mandiri.
Masyarakat miskin diperkotaan itu unik dengan berbagai problematika sosialnya, perlu untuk dikupas akar masalah dan merumuskan solusi terbaik bagi kesejahteraan mereka, mengembangkan system nilai solidaritas sosial sebagai agenda terpenting para candidat yang terpilih nantinya pasca pilkada.
Pasca Pilkada ini diharapkan dapat memberi nuansa baru dalam gerakan pemberdayaan masyarakat akar rumput, lihat saja salah satu yang kita anggap masyarakat akar rumput yaitu komunitas sopir angkot.
kentang asli berkualitas dan terbaik se asia
Kentang Atlantik Potensial Daerah
Kabupaten Kerinci sebagai daerah agraris yang subur, perlu dilakukan upaya peningkatan basis ekonomi melalui pengembangan sektor pertanian. Demikian dengan komoditi kentang atlantik yang dapat tumbuh baik didaerah ini.
Bahkan Pemkab Kerinci bertekad melakukan pengembangan kentang atlantik diberbagai areal pertanian yang dianggap berpotensi, seperti Kayu Aro, Renah Pemetik dan berbagai daerah lainnya.
Pengembangan dilakukan dengan memberikan kemudahan dalam fasilitas bibit kepada masyarakat. Dengan adanya keseriusan masyarakat petani dan bantuan bibit kentang atlantis dari pemerintah, kebutuhan kentang bagi daerah dan luar daerah akan terpenuhi, jelas Wabup Kerinci H. Hasani Hamid kepada Singgalang Selasa 1/6.
Menurutnya, baru ini dibeberapa dikawasan pertanian telah dilaksanakan peninjauan oleh pemkab dan sesuai dengan kebutuhan dilakukanlah penyerahan bibit kentang atlantis.
Jika adanya kerjasama antara masyarakat petani dan pemerintah, maka program yang telah dicanangkan untuk masa depan Kerinci dapat terwujud. Justru itu diperlukan informasi yang jelas dari masyarakat tentang berbagai kendala dan hambatan, serta perkembangan dilapangan.
Bila pengembangan kentang atlantis dapat berhasil, maka secara spontanitas akan berimbas positif bagi sektor lainnya. Hal ini cukup memberikan arti dalam mengimbangi pembangunan yang sedang digalakkan oleh pemerintah.
Kabupaten Kerinci sebagai daerah agraris yang subur, perlu dilakukan upaya peningkatan basis ekonomi melalui pengembangan sektor pertanian. Demikian dengan komoditi kentang atlantik yang dapat tumbuh baik didaerah ini.
Bahkan Pemkab Kerinci bertekad melakukan pengembangan kentang atlantik diberbagai areal pertanian yang dianggap berpotensi, seperti Kayu Aro, Renah Pemetik dan berbagai daerah lainnya.
Pengembangan dilakukan dengan memberikan kemudahan dalam fasilitas bibit kepada masyarakat. Dengan adanya keseriusan masyarakat petani dan bantuan bibit kentang atlantis dari pemerintah, kebutuhan kentang bagi daerah dan luar daerah akan terpenuhi, jelas Wabup Kerinci H. Hasani Hamid kepada Singgalang Selasa 1/6.
Menurutnya, baru ini dibeberapa dikawasan pertanian telah dilaksanakan peninjauan oleh pemkab dan sesuai dengan kebutuhan dilakukanlah penyerahan bibit kentang atlantis.
Jika adanya kerjasama antara masyarakat petani dan pemerintah, maka program yang telah dicanangkan untuk masa depan Kerinci dapat terwujud. Justru itu diperlukan informasi yang jelas dari masyarakat tentang berbagai kendala dan hambatan, serta perkembangan dilapangan.
Bila pengembangan kentang atlantis dapat berhasil, maka secara spontanitas akan berimbas positif bagi sektor lainnya. Hal ini cukup memberikan arti dalam mengimbangi pembangunan yang sedang digalakkan oleh pemerintah.
capital struktur
Capital Structure and Risk in Islamic Financial Services*
Wafik Grais and Anoma Kulathunga
*The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this chapter are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.
1. Introduction: Information, Risks, and Capital
Financial intermediation is a critical factor for growth and social inclusion. One of its core functions is to mobilize financial resources from surplus agents and channel them to those with deficits. It thus allows investor entrepreneurs to expand economic activity and employment opportunities. It also enables household consumers, micro- and small entrepreneurs to expand their own welfare and earnings opportunities, and seek to smooth their lifetime outlays. In all cases, financial intermediation drives economic growth and contributes to social inclusion, provided it is conducted in a sound and efficient way.
A financial intermediary’s ability to process information on risks and returns of investment opportunities will have a bearing on the soundness and efficiency of its resource mobilization and reallocation function. Conventional financial services (CFSs) process information through institutions or markets, and have generally evolved from the former to the latter. In both cases, markets and agents provide alternative ways of processing information on risks and returns of investment opportunities. In the first form, the intermediary raises capital to set up business to collect generally liquid deposits from surplus agents and reallocates these resources, now in his trust, to ones with deficits in generally less liquid assets. In the second form, surplus agents buy directly financial assets that represent a debt of a deficit agent or an ownership share in its business. In either approach, both categories of agents engage in transactions on the basis of trust and of expectations about the degree of liquidity that would provide the option to re-contract at a reasonable cost. In the case of banks, the trust can be seen as based on proprietary information. In the case of markets, the information is more commoditized and widely available.
Efficiently processed information can support the efficient allocation of capital. It can help a financial intermediary to better define the capital it would need to achieve the returns sought, while maintaining its ability to face the financial consequences of unexpected events that may endanger its stability. Banks engage in gathering and processing information on clients and markets, which allows them to manage different risks by unbundling them and reallocating the components. By performing these services soundly and efficiently, banks can manage to calibrate their capital requirements and receive diversified income streams. Thus a bank’s investors and customers can gain comfort as to its reliability in allowing them to access liquidity and maintain stability. In parallel with banks, financial markets can also convey the same sense of access to liquidity and stability based on disclosed and broadly available information on market participants. Markets can provide deficit and surplus agents a direct role in processing information to facilitate the unbundling and reallocation of risks and the efficient use of capital. Thus, banks and markets compete and complement each other in financial intermediation. The competition puts pressure on individual agents to use capital at their disposal efficiently, and results in a system-wide improved allocation of capital resources.
Institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFSs) also process information on risks and returns of investment opportunities while complying with Shari’ah principles. Thus, in principle, they can be expected to increase competition in financial information processing by inducing better risk management and capital use. Such competition can be expected over time to lead to an efficient use of capital at the level of each financial agent, whether they practice conventional or Islamic finance, and in aggregate, system-wide across all modes of financial intermediation. Efficient use of capital is thus a challenge which competition imposes on all financial intermediaries, whether offering Islamic financial services or conventional financial services. At the same time, Islamic financial intermediation needs to comply with Shari’ah principles, notably those of risk sharing and materiality of financial transactions. Shari’ah compliance, social responsibility, and the discipline of competition compound IIFSs’ challenge to process information efficiently in order to manage the risks they may face and use their capital endowments. Thus, by their very nature and the environment in which they generally operate, IIFSs need to be well equipped with the information and skills that can allow them to identify their capital resources and use them efficiently.
This chapter argues for the need for Islamic financial services to strengthen risk management practices in the process of defining their own capital requirements in accordance with their loss tolerance. It suggests that IIFSs could invest in the collection of loss information and adoption of loss data management systems. IIFSs would benefit from implementing risk management methodologies and adapting their staffing skills accordingly. The chapter starts in Section 2 by outlining views on the relationship between risk management and capital for financial intermediation. It then overviews risk categories as an initial step in risk management in Section 3. Section 4 discusses regulatory and economic capital, introducing risk occurrence frequency as a distribution probability. Section 5 concludes with suggestions on steps that may help with risk management and improve the competitiveness of IIFSs.
2. Bank Capital and Risk Management
Bank capital may be considered as consisting of (a) equity capital and (b) certain non-deposit liabilities or debt capital (see Section 4). It is both a means of funding earnings-generating assets and a stability cushion. From the perspective of efficiency and returns, capital is part of a bank’s funding that can be applied directly to the purchase of earning assets, as well as being used as a basis for leverage to raise other funds for expanding assets with the net benefit accruing to shareholders. From a perspective of stability, bank capital is a cushion for absorbing shocks of business losses and maintaining solvency, with benefits accruing to depositors and other stakeholders. Both financial intermediaries and regulators are sensitive to the dual role of capital, as a means of funding earnings-generating assets and as a cushion for dealing with unanticipated events. Financial intermediaries may tend to be more focused on the former role and regulators on the latter.
A bank’s capital structure decision relates to the ratio of capital to deposits and to the ratio of debt capital to equity capital. Its performance, in terms of return on equity capital, will be influenced by its ability to calibrate the level of capital it requires. Through efficient risk management, it can reach a sense of which capital structure can best help it to: (a) achieve profitability while maintaining stability; (b) reassure markets as to the quality of its business conduct; and (c) have a constructive dialogue with regulators.
Efficient use of capital will help IIFSs to achieve profitability and stability. Allocating capital resources to low-performing or excessively risky assets is bound to drag down performance, endanger stability, or both. Equally, leaving capital idle entails at best forgoing earnings opportunities. For instance, overly cautious approaches that lead financial intermediaries to maintain larger amounts of capital than warranted by their risk profile may not allow them either to obtain the full potential of their capital or to contribute effectively to the development of the communities they serve. At the other end of the spectrum, a financial intermediary overly eager to achieve returns may allocate resources to highly risky assets that offer high returns but endanger stability. Explicit risk management practices can help in the selection of assets to which capital and other resources are applied and calibrate the level of capital that best suits business objectives and stability tolerance.
The size and composition of the resources that capital enables financial intermediaries to raise are likely to affect their profitability and stability. In a frictionless world where full information is available and markets are complete, the value of a firm would be independent of its capital structure, and so the focus should be on capital level and not structure. Under such circumstances, the method by which a financial intermediary raises its required funds would be irrelevant. However, financial intermediaries do not operate in a frictionless world; they face imperfections such as costs of bankruptcy and financial distress, transaction costs, asymmetric information, or taxes. They also operate within the framework of a governing regulation possibly with a deposit insurance scheme that is expected to provide a safety net. In fact, one may contend that these market imperfections are the very reason for the successful existence of banks as financial intermediaries. Accordingly, not only a financial intermediary’s level of capital but also its structure is likely to bear on its market valuation, its business conduct, and its stability. Effective risk management strategies should contribute to a financial intermediary’s ability to assess not only the level of capital it would need in relation to assets and deposits, but also the extent to which its structure affects its value.
Market discipline contributes to responsible corporate behavior. Markets’ reactions to perceptions of a financial intermediary’s business conduct and capital strength may be unforgiving. It is thus in the interest of financial intermediaries to develop approaches to defining capital resource requirements that take into account the institutional environment in which they operate. The market’s perception of market imperfections is likely to influence views on the appropriate level of capital and the capital adequacy of financial intermediaries. For example, the availability of a safety net may lead market participants to be less demanding as to the need for capital in relation to bank assets. Conversely, anticipation of high costs of financial distress to depositors and other stakeholders may induce market participants to require the holding of more capital proportionally to assets. Similarly, wherever the institutional environment is weak and contract enforcement is uncertain and costly, markets may expect financial intermediaries to adapt the capital they hold.
The management of capital structure should in principle mitigate the risk of bank failures. When comparing a highly leveraged bank and a bank that is well capitalized, the leveraged bank will likely experience a greater loss of value during times of financial distress when the asset quality deteriorates, due to the increased risk of bankruptcy. To cope with downturns, in most countries banks hold a minimum amount of capital, based on the risk embedded in their asset holding. Accordingly, banks with relatively risky assets would hold a higher amount of capital than those banks with less risky assets. However, fearing the harshness of market discipline, many banks maintain a higher level of capital than the minimum required to allay the perception that they may be undercapitalized and avoid the losses this may induce, as witnessed in the 1980s. The key capital adequacy ratio provides an assessment of just how adequately the capital cushions such fluctuations in the bank’s earnings and supports higher assets growth.
Finally, efficient risk management should allow financial intermediaries to have a constructive dialogue with regulators. It would help them to articulate their views with respect to capital needs. The regulators’ rationale for regulating capital stems from the perception of the public-good nature of bank services, their potential macroeconomic growth and stability impact, and experience with costly bank failures. According to some estimates, such costs have varied between 3% and 55% of GDP. Thus, regulators’ concerns with possible systemic risk resulting from the contagion effects of bank runs lead them to seek to mitigate risks of financial distress with regulatory requirements on banks’ capital. Regulators’ concerns may be compounded by the presence of deposit insurance schemes. The moral hazard that may result from deposit insurance may lead to additional regulatory requirements such as linking the level of insurance premia to the risk embedded in assets and captured in associated risk weights. Indeed, deposit insurance may induce banks to lever up capital by expanding their own funding with liabilities, thus placing more risk on their capital and increasing their vulnerability. Efficient risk management practices would allow banks to improve their dialogue with the regulator and convey more convincingly their views on their soundness and capital requirements.
Regulators would generally also be concerned with the overall impact on the economy of the resources raised by the financial system under their purview. From an economy-wide perspective, banks may be viewed as firms’ competitors in raising capital on financial markets. The outcome of this competition has a bearing on economic performance and financial stability, and points to a cost–benefit tradeoff in holding capital. For instance, Gersbach (2002) suggests that a benefit of bank capital is the equity acting as a buffer against future losses, thereby reducing excessive risk taking of the banks. At the same time, raising bank capital may lead to a crowding out of industrial firms, limiting their access to equity and other market funding and also impacting their access to funding from banks and its cost. Furthermore, raising equity on markets may increase the cost of banks’ resources, inducing them to seek to invest in higher-yielding but more risky assets and thereby increasing their risk exposure. Thus, while potentially providing a cushion against unforeseen events, a higher level of equity may actually induce more risk taking, notably through raising the cost of funds to banks and their clients. Efficient risk management can provide inputs to both banks and regulators to better calibrate capital needs and deal with the foregoing type of tradeoff.
The level of a financial intermediary’s capital may also have a bearing on its ability to provide liquidity. The financial intermediary provides liquidity by funding assets that may be less liquid than the deposit resources it collects. There is a view that requirements for higher levels of capital may have a negative impact on liquidity creation. On the liability side, a higher capital requirement may lead to a corresponding reduction in the level of deposits, thus constraining the ability to provide liquidity. Also, higher capital requirements may induce financial intermediaries to be more restrained in extending financing, thus constraining their ability to provide liquidity. However, according to another view, higher capital would allow the financial intermediary to create more liquidity since its risk-absorptive capacity would be improved. In this regard, an empirical study concluded that for larger banks capital has a statistically significant positive net effect on liquidity creation, while for small banks this effect is negative. Accordingly, each financial intermediary would need to evaluate carefully the level and composition of the capital it needs, since the latter plays a significant role in its ability to function as a liquidity provider. Equally, regulators would need to pay attention to the impact which capital requirement would have on the funding of the economy.
IIFS’s risk management arrangements will bear on their ability to calibrate capital to their business objectives and risk tolerance, to deal with market discipline, and to maintain a dialogue with regulators. The IIFS’s characteristic of mobilizing funds in the form of risk-sharing investment accounts in place of conventional deposits, together with the materiality of financing transactions, may alter the overall risk of the balance sheet and, consequently, the assessment of their capital requirements. Indeed, risk-sharing “deposits” would in principle reduce the need for a safety cushion to weather adverse investment outcomes. Similarly, the materiality of investments is likely to modify the extent of their risk and have a bearing on the assessment for the overall need for capital; asset-based modes of finance may be less risky and profit-sharing modes more risky, than conventional interest-bearing modes. Nevertheless, IIFSs would operate within a regulatory framework that is likely to impose on them capital requirements with a view to promoting stability and limiting contagion risks. However, besides regulatory and market demands for IIFSs to hold capital, IIFSs need to put in place risk management assessments for their own purposes of returns and stability in accordance with the requirements of Shari’ah, their own mission statements, and the protection of their stakeholders.
3. Risk Identification and Risk Management
Efficient risk management capability is necessary to enable IIFSs to strategically position themselves in the global market by using their capital efficiently. Weak risk management systems may deprive IIFSs of the ability to hedge risks, and undermine their potential contribution to the communities they aim to serve. Adequate resources need to be devoted to risk identification and measurement, as well as to the development of risk management techniques. In this respect, there is a pressing need to combine solid understanding of Shari’ah law with a good knowledge of modern risk management techniques so as to be able to develop innovative risk mitigation and hedging instruments.
An initial step is a clear identification of risks that may arise in the conduct of Islamic financial intermediation. In carrying out their function, banks manage portfolios of assets and liabilities as well as their capital. Accordingly, each asset, each portfolio, and the intermediary as a whole are subject to risks. Exhibit 4.1 outlines the main risks intermediaries face under four broad categories. Each risk category captures the occurrence of some event that would affect the performance of an asset, a portfolio, or the whole balance sheet.
Exhibit 4.1 Outline of the risks facing financial intermediaries
Type of risk Rationale
Financial risk
Credit risk
The risk of counterparty failure to meet their obligations in a timely manner.
Interest rate risk (a) Risk of a reduction in the value of a fixed-interest asset (e.g. bond) due to a rise in interest rates (part of market risk, unless the asset is in the “banking book” – see (b)). (b) Risk of an interest rate mismatch between fixed-rate assets and floating-rate liabilities, or vice-versa, resulting in a profit and cash flow “squeeze.”
Market risk Risk common to entire class of assets or liabilities due to economic changes or external events (systemic risk, e.g. changes in stock market sentiment, interest rates, currency or commodity markets).
Liquidity risk Risk that arises from the difficulty of trading an asset (asset liquidity risk) and difficulty in obtaining funding at a reasonable cost (financing liquidity risk).
Settlement risk Risk that a counterparty does not deliver security or its value in cash as per agreement when the security is traded after other counterparty (ies) have delivered security or cash as per agreement.
Prepayment risk The risk of loans (especially mortgage loans) being prepaid before maturity due to a drop in interest rates.
Operational risk Risks associated with the potential for systems failure in a given market; usually resulting from inadequate internal processes and strategies, people, and systems, or from external events.
Business risk
Legal and regulatory risk Due to changes in the law and regulations that adversely affect a bank’s position.
Volatility risk Fluctuations in the exchange rate of currencies.
Equity risk Depreciation of investments due to stock market dynamics, etc.
Country risk Potential volatility of foreign assets due to political or financial events in a particular country.
Event risk
Unpredictable risks due to unforeseen events such as banking crises, contagion effects, and such other exogenous factors.
In extending financing and raising resources, IIFSs face risks similar to those encountered by their conventional counterparts, but with variations due to specific requirements to comply with Shari’ah. The requirement of materiality of the financing transaction and the prohibition of interest shape the nature of the instruments IIFSs can use and their embedded risk. The foregoing features also put constraints on IIFSs’ ability to manage liquidity, as they may not have recourse to repo facilities and interest-bearing instruments characteristic of money markets. In addition, the prohibition of gharar constrains the use of hedging instruments useful for asset–liability management. Furthermore, there may be operational risks in failing to ensure Shari’ah compliance. Exhibit 4.2 outlines the specific risks facing IIFSs.
Exhibit 4.2 Risks specific to Islamic financial services
Type of risk Rationale
Commodities and inventory risk Arising from holding items in inventory either for resale under a Murabaha contract, or with a view to leasing under an Ijara contract.
Rate of return risk Similar to interest rate risk in the banking book. However, IIFSs are not exposed to interest rate risk as such, but to a “squeeze” resulting from holding fixed-return assets such as Murabaha that are financed by investment accounts, the holders of which (investment account holders) expect a rate of return risk in line with benchmark rates. An increase in benchmark rates may result in investment account holders having expectations of a higher rate of return (see also mark-up risk).
Legal and Shari’ah compliance risk Risks associated with the potential for systems failure in a given market; usually resulting from inadequate internal processes and strategies, people, and systems, or from external events. This includes legal and Shari’ah compliance risk.
Equity position risk in the banking book Arises from the equity exposures in Mudaraba and Musharakah financing contracts.
Mark-up risk
(benchmark risk) Since IIFSs do not use interest, they use market rates as benchmarks in pricing their products. Hence, there is a risk associated with the changes to the benchmark rate (see rate of return risk).
Credit risk for IIFSs arises in connection with accounts receivable in Murabaha contracts, counterparty risk in Salam contracts, accounts receivable and counterparty risk in Istisna’a contracts, and lease payments receivable in Ijara contracts. On average across IIFS balance sheets, Murabaha appears to be the dominant mode of financing (41%), followed by Musharakah (11%), Mudarabah (12%), and Ijarah (10%). Thus the bulk of the financing may still essentially be trade financing, with more limited engagement in profit-sharing assets and leasing. Accordingly, it may still be the case that credit risk is the dominant risk IIFSs need to contend with.
A major cause of serious financial intermediaries’ potential distress continues to be lax credit standards for borrowers and counterparties, poor portfolio risk management, or a lack of attention to changes in economic or other external circumstances that can adversely impact the credit standing of a bank’s counterparties. It is notably the predominance of this credit risk that underlines the Basel II Accord’s recommendations of the three approaches to credit risk assessment for capital adequacy purposes: the Standardized Approach, the Foundation Internal Rating-Based (IRB) Approach, and the Advanced IRB Approach. In various degrees, these approaches provide banks with the opportunity to have their own credit risk assessment methodology contribute to the identification of capital needs. The better equipped a financial intermediary is in risk management, the more opportunity it would have to calibrate its capital needs and use its resources most efficiently, thus strengthening its competitive position. Accordingly, the quality of IIFSs’ risk management plays a critical role in determining their competitiveness.
In contrast to the foregoing, there may be a perception within IIFSs that the most critical risk they face may be the mark-up risk or rate of return risk. In order of importance, it would be followed by operational risk and liquidity risk. While credit risk is the predominant risk most financial intermediaries (whether CFS or IFS) deal with, surveyed IIFSs do not perceive it as being as severe as most other risks they identify. IIFSs appear to consider market risk as the least serious (see Exhibit 4.3).
Exhibit 4.3 Risk perception: Overall risks faced by Islamic financial institutions
Number of relevant responses Average rank*
Mark-up or rate of return risk 15 3.07
Operational risk 13 2.92
Liquidity risk 16 2.81
Credit risk 14 2.71
Market risk 10 2.50
* The rank has a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating “Not Serious” and 5 denoting “Critically Serious.”
Source: Adapted from Khan and Ahmed (2001).
A clear identification of the event and its translation into a measurable variable would be a prerequisite to render the notion of risk operationally relevant, in the sense of guiding actual business conduct. For example, an Ijarah contract on a movable asset may not be serviced according to the signed agreement. Assuming, for simplicity, that the contract may be only either serviced or not (that is, there is either no default in payment by the lessee, or there is default), then the risk variable becomes the occurrence of the event of default. It is an observable variable that may take a value of one if there is default and zero otherwise. Over time, observations on the risk profile of various instruments extended to various categories of IIFS clients can be developed. These statistical observations can be used to strengthen risk management and guide the extension of financing. Thus for each identified risk, there is a necessary step to translate it into an observable variable and set up a system to collect and maintain the relevant information, as well as to develop methodologies to process the information to guide decision making. Admittedly, not all possible risks may be anticipated and translated into an observable variable capturing the occurrence of an event. Furthermore, events may not be mutually independent, pointing also to the need to focus on their possible correlation, its observation and measurement. Experience with risk identification and management practices can only be helpful.
4. Regulatory and Economic Capital
Progress in risk management and evolving regulators’ and market participants’ views are prompting changes in the determination of capital requirements. Regulators may have been initially concerned mainly with depositors’ protection, stability and contagion issues, while financial intermediaries’ focus would have been essentially on business profitability and expansion. Accordingly, in initial approaches, regulators set a general rule, applying to all without much differentiation, requiring financial intermediaries to hold a minimum amount of capital. Regulators’ caution had led to what could be qualified as a relatively blunt capital adequacy rule. Flaws in the rule and a convergence of concerns between regulators and financial intermediaries led to other approaches better adapted to specific conditions of markets and intermediaries. Over time, regulators’ awareness of their role in market development expanded at the same time as financial intermediaries’ sense of corporate responsibility in promoting market stability. Progress in risk management approaches facilitated the evolution. Accordingly, regulation is evolving from rule-based, relatively blunt capital requirements to risk-based assessments of capital needs, or economic capital.
4.1 Regulatory Capital
From one perspective, capital is viewed as the funding source to be used to protect the parties who have claims on banking assets, such as depositors, against unexpected losses. In order to ensure that banks are sufficiently funded for that purpose, or adequately capitalized, regulators have come up with regulatory minimum capital requirements under Basel Capital Accords. The focus of the initial 1988 accord was on a cushion for credit risk. This was amended in 1996 to include capital requirements to cover market risks. However, during the late 1990s with the growth of securitization and credit derivatives some financial intermediaries resorted to regulatory arbitrage using regulatory inconsistencies to increase profitability (the return on capital) at the expense of capital adequacy. Another development was the resort to the rolling over of short-term loans whose risk weight was nil or negligible, thus increasing financial corporate fragility. Concerns about the evolving nature of risks and these developments prompted a review of the Basel I framework and motivated the development of the Basel II Accord. A major thrust was an emphasis on taking better account of the risk profile of the intermediary and its ability to manage risks in reaching a sense of its capital requirement. In addition, in the course of developing the Basel II framework, attention was given to operational risk and a related requirement for a capital cushion.
The capital adequacy pillar of the Basel II framework (Pillar I) proposes three alternative approaches (as mentioned above) to assessing the capital requirement to associate with credit risk. Risk weights to be used in respect of credit risk are obtained based on one of three models that rely more or less on the financial intermediary’s own internal risk rating. In the simple model, or standardized approach, the risk weighting system relies on external agency ratings of the borrowers. In a more elaborate model, the financial intermediary uses its own risk management model to obtain internal ratings. Whether externally or internally derived, the risk weights are used to obtain a value of the assets that incorporates credit, market, and operational risk. The banking institution would be expected to maintain a minimum capital to risk-weighted assets ratio of 8% at all times. Hence, regulatory capital requirement is linked directly to an assessment of the degree of risk of the assets a bank holds. Thus, to improve its capital adequacy ratio, a bank would have the option either to increase its capital or to reduce the risky assets it holds, or a combination of both. A contribution of the new Basel Accord is to insert alternative ways of assessing the risks associated with the assets held, with a larger role given to a bank’s own risk assessment if the regulator is satisfied with its ability to make such assessments. Salient features of the Basel II Accord are highlighted in Exhibit 4.4.
Exhibit 4.4 Salient features of the Basel II Accord
Capital requirement standards have been developed for IIFSs adapting conventional Basel approaches. A first guidance was given by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) recommending not including the risk-sharing account deposits in capital. Recently, the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) issued a capital adequacy standard based on the Basel II standardized approach with a similar approach to risk weights. However, the minimum capital adequacy requirements for both credit and market risks are set out for each of the Shari’ah-compliant financing and investment instruments. The IFSB standard (IFSB, 2005b) calls for supervisory discretion in determining a share “α” of risk-weighted assets funded by risk-sharing investment deposits that can be deducted from the total risk-weighted assets for the purpose of assessing capital adequacy. This share “α” represents the extent of total risk assumed by the investment account holders, with the remainder absorbed by the shareholders on account of displaced commercial risk. Like for CFSs, the minimum capital adequacy requirement for IIFSs in the IFSB standard is also not lower than 8% for total capital.
4.2 Definitions of Capital
Defining what constitutes capital has been a long-debated issue. However, there is wide acceptance of the capital structure that has been stipulated by the Basel committee, where capital is segregated into three categories, as set out in Exhibit 4.5.
Exhibit 4.5 Classification of capital in Basel accords
Classification Contents
Tier 1 (core capital)
Ordinary paid-up share capital/common stock, disclosed reserves from post-tax retained earnings, non-cumulative perpetual preferred stock (goodwill to be deducted).
Tier 2 (supplementary capital)
Undisclosed reserves, asset revaluation reserves, general provisions/general loan-loss provisions, hybrid (debt/equity) capital instruments, and subordinated term debts.1
Tier 3
Unsecured debt: subordinated and fully paid up, to have an original maturity of at least two years and not be repayable before the agreed repayment date unless the supervisory authority agrees.2
1 Eligible tier 2 capital may not exceed total tier 1 capital, and long-term subordinated debt may not exceed 50% of tier 1 capital.
2 This will be limited to 250% of a bank’s tier 1 capital, which is required to support market risks.
To be considered as adequately capitalized, requirements were set for the international banks in the G10 countries to hold a minimum total capital (tier 1 and tier 2) equal to 8% of risk-adjusted assets.
For IIFS, tier 1 capital would be the same as in CFSs. The reserves, however, would include the shareholders’ portion of the profit equalization reserve (PER), which is included in the disclosed reserves. In tier 2 capital, there would not be any hybrid capital instruments or subordinated debts as in CFSs, as these would bear interest and contravene Shari’ah principles. However, an issue is the treatment of unrestricted risk-sharing investment accounts that may be viewed as equity investments on a limited-term basis, in principle. In the debate on whether or not to include these accounts in tier 2 capital, the AAOIFI committee on capital adequacy concluded that it would not be appropriate to include the PSIA in tier 2 capital.
The Islamic Financial Services Board has taken a similar position. The IFSB Capital Adequacy Standard (IFSB, 2005b) calls for supervisory discretion in determining a share “α” of risk-weighted assets funded by profit-sharing investment “deposits” that can be deducted from the total risk-weighted assets for the purpose of assessing capital adequacy. This share “α” represents the extent of total risk assumed by the investment account holders, with the remainder absorbed by the shareholders on account of displaced commercial risk. As for CFSs, the minimum capital adequacy requirement for IIFSs in the IFSB standard is not lower than 8% of total capital.
The issue is of major importance, as IIFSs use profit-sharing investment “deposits” as a form of leverage (Archer and Karim, 2006; Al-Deehani, Karim, and Murinde, 1999). Such deposits not only expose IIFSs to operational risk; there is also the issue of “displaced commercial risk” mentioned above.
4.3 Economic Capital
“Economic capital” represents the emerging practice for measuring and reporting all kinds of risk across a financial organization. Regulators have gradually factored in market development concerns in setting capital adequacy requirements by incorporating improved assessments of the risks embedded in the assets held by financial institutions. The latter have developed improved tools to assess the risks of their assets and their modes of operations. These tools allow financial intermediaries to reach better assessments of the economic capital they may need to best match their profit objectives and risk tolerance. “Economic capital” would measure risk in terms of economic conditions, rather than potentially misleading regulatory or accounting rules. It is called economic capital as its identification involves converting a probability distribution of occurrences of risk events into an amount of possible losses for which capital charges may be required, in line with the institution’s target financial strength (for example, credit rating). As such, it should permit achieving higher economic efficiency in capital use.
Risks, such as those highlighted in the previous section, may lead in practice to expected as well as unexpected losses. Both would be based on the frequency of occurrence of an event and the loss that may be associated with it. For the purpose of calculating economic capital, the amount of expected losses is the average of the anticipated losses over a distinct period of time. This expectation should be formed using actual observations that normally happen in the conduct of normal business over a given period. The financial intermediary would factor these expected losses in its pricing and make corresponding adequate provisions. However, there are also losses that may not be part of the normal conduct of business and whose occurrence would be unexpected. They would be the outcome of a worst-case adverse event for which no specific provision can be made as part of normal business conduct. Here the actual losses would be expected to be large and exceed what normal pricing could cover. These unexpected losses may be so large that the financial intermediary may go on to default, but the frequency of occurrence of such catastrophic events would be expected to be very low under normal circumstances.
Exhibit 4.6 provides an illustration of a shape of a distribution of losses, highlighting the notion of expected and unexpected loss. The former is the mean or the average loss over a given period and may be covered by specific provisioning. Losses larger than expected losses would be expected to occur with increasingly lower frequency, the larger they are. Over a given period, covering such losses in all circumstances – that is, irrespectively of the expected frequency of their occurrence – would require a large volume of capital. It would be prohibitive from a business perspective, as costly capital would be locked in low-return-yielding investments, and accordingly be uneconomical. Thus, financial intermediaries and regulators interested in market vibrancy would be interested in identifying the level of economic capital that would provide a sufficient stability cushion without stifling the financial intermediary, given the expected frequency of unexpected losses over a certain period. Hence, in its management of unexpected risks, the financial intermediary may decide to conduct its business accepting that there may be, say, a chance of one in 100 of becoming insolvent in a given time period (say, in the next 12 months). It would just define its economic capital accordingly as that level of capital that would allow it to face unexpected losses whose probability of occurrence in the given time period may be not more than 99%.
In the above example, the 1% represents the probability that losses may exceed the economic capital. This type of loss may be due to a system shock that is rare, and hence not need to be covered by capital. In computing the economic capital, credit and operating risks could be estimated using the probability distribution of historical losses, while for market risk it is possible to calculate the daily value-at-risk and then convert it to an amount of economic capital. Thus, economic capital can reflect a comprehensive risk measurement addressing the full range of risks faced by the financial intermediary. It is a useful tool in the hands of the management of the financial intermediary, allowing it to calibrate the level of capital that is economical to hold in order to achieve return and stability objectives. Provided the implemented methodology is sound and robust as well as transparent, it can provide a valuable foundation for a constructive dialogue with regulators and other stakeholders that contributes further to market vibrancy and stability.
Exhibit 4.6 A probability distribution of losses
Source: Burns (2004).
For simplicity, assume that Exhibit 4.6 provides the probability distribution of losses associated with Murabaha contracts that finance trade within a 12-month period. The vertical axis on the left indicates the frequency of various levels of loss, and the horizontal axis at the bottom indicates the various amounts of losses that may occur. Thus, moving from the left to the right of the curve, the frequency of losses on those contracts initially increases with the size of losses; then, beyond a certain size of loss, it diminishes. Thus the expectation of losses over the period would be the sum of losses weighted by the expected frequency of their occurrence. However, larger losses may also occur but with lower and lower frequency as larger and larger sizes of losses are contemplated. Beyond a certain size of loss the intermediary would decide not to bother to cope with them and accept the possibility of not being able to protect its solvency. Beneath that size it would keep some economic capital reserve that would correspond to a measure of the sum of the difference between possible unexpected losses and expected losses, weighted by the frequency of occurrences of such differences. The foregoing approach could be extended to various types of contracts and elaborated to address correlations between risks, providing a comprehensive risk management tool.
While IIFSs’ and CFSs’ modes of intermediation, financial instruments, and risks may differ, the general approach would be applicable to both types of financial intermediaries. A better-circumscribed economic capital can allow IIFSs to manage their resources more efficiently while providing comfort to their stakeholders. A major difference between IIFSs and CFSs relates to investment account deposits. While for IIFSs, the expected losses would be borne by the income, as in CFSs, the risk capital needed to meet unexpected losses may be less for IIFSs since, theoretically, they accept investment deposits which are risk-sharing contracts. In principle, the Islamic financial intermediary would share in the profit as an agent–Mudarib with the depositor, but the latter would bear losses that are the outcome of market conditions but not of a Mudarib’s misconduct. Hence the risk-sharing feature of investment account deposits would reduce the overall risks for IIFSs in principle. Under the circumstances, and going back to the Murabaha contract illustration in the foregoing, the IIFS would be expected to conduct business in such a way as to deal with expected losses, pricing its products and accumulating provisions accordingly. The IIFS would identify economic capital to deal with unexpected losses that are due notably to misconduct. Unanticipated adverse events that are beyond the reasonable anticipation of the IIFS would normally not need to be cushioned, as profit-sharing investment account “depositors” would share the losses attributable to the assets (or the proportion of assets) financed by their funds.
In light of the above, the PER and investment risk reserve (IRR) may be considered in terms of the perspective of dealing with expected and unexpected losses to the extent that funds in these reserves provide cushions similar to capital. Pricing designed to cope with expected losses should limit the need for a PER to addressing errors in setting pricing and other such unexpected events. Similarly, the IRR could address unexpected losses (excluding those due to misconduct or negligence), as pricing would be expected to generate resources to fund provisions for expected losses. Investment account deposits, PER, IRR, and capital could usefully be considered within a comprehensive risk management framework in order for IIFSs to best calibrate their economic capital, strengthen their ability to compete, and maintain stability.
5. Conclusion
The chapter argues for developing and implementing risk management approaches and methodologies for IIFSs. Whether for the latter or CFSs, capital is both a core input for business development and a sustainability cushion against the consequences of unexpected adverse events. This double perspective entails a tradeoff in identifying the level and composition of capital a financial intermediary maintains. An over-emphasis on stability may stunt the intermediary’s vibrancy, while too much focus on business development may eventually jeopardize stability.
The evolution of regulators’ and market participants’ thinking is leading them increasingly to take more account of the intermediary’s risk profile and tolerance in assessing capital requirements. Technical innovations are allowing both to make professional progress in this direction. These developments are giving them better ways to calibrate the level and composition of capital requirements to balance more efficiently requirements of market development and stability. IIFSs cannot but gain in developing and adopting sound advanced risk management methodologies. They would allow them not only to achieve their business objective of profitability more easily, but also to cope better with the discipline which markets impose, as well as to conduct a beneficial and constructive dialogue with regulators.
Seeking to implement improved risk management practices entails as a first step an effort to identify clearly the risk categories an IIFS may face. These would then need to be translated into variables representing the occurrence of the risk events and the losses these may entail. Some probability distribution would then be associated with each category of risk to provide a framework for assessing the likelihood and extent of losses that may occur. Such a framework would also allow the IIFS to conceptualize the economic capital that corresponds to a level of risk tolerance. It would also provide an approach to setting pricing policies that would incorporate the losses that can be expected in the normal conduct of business.
Implementing a framework incorporating the foregoing features entails the availability of loss data that reflect their historical occurrences within given time periods. The richer the data set in terms of number of observations and their categorization, the better informed the risk management framework can be, the better the pricing policy and the more efficient the identification of the level and composition of capital. Accordingly, IIFSs (like other banks seeking to develop an IRB approach and other sophisticated risk measurement techniques) need to put in place data management systems to collect and process loss data. However, collecting a data set sufficiently large to provide robust inferences on the actual risk the IIFS faces may take some time. An option would be for IIFSs to join efforts and pool data sets to accelerate the process of improving their risk management practices. In parallel, IIFSs would be investing in enhancing the risk management skills available to them.
IIFSs are already engaged in strengthening their stability and competitiveness through improvements in risk management capabilities. Over time, these efforts should enable IIFS to reach assessments of their capital requirements that would permit them to use their resources efficiently and offer services that contribute effectively to the development of the communities they want to serve.
.
References
Al-Deehani, T., R.A.A Karim, and V. Murinde (1999), “The Capital Structure of Islamic Banks under the Contractual Obligation of Profit Sharing,” International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, pp. 243–83.
Allen, F. and D. Gale (2004), “Financial Intermediaries and Markets,” Econometrica, Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 1023–61.
Archer, S. (2005), “Adapting Basel II: The IFSB Draft Standard – Issues of Risk Bearing Capital and Risk Management,” Islamic Financial Services Forum, The European Challenge, Luxembourg, December.
Archer, S. and R.A.A. Karim (forthcoming 2006), “On Capital Structure, Risk Sharing and Capital Adequacy in Islamic Banks,” International Journal of Theoretical & Applied Finance.
Barth, R., G. Caprio, and R. Levine (2006), Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Berger, A. and C. Bouwman (2005), “Bank Capital and Liquidity Creation,” EFA 2005 Moscow Meetings Paper, June, http://ssrn.com/abstract=672784.
Bessis, J. (2002), Risk Management in Banking, John Wiley & Sons, London.
Burghardt, I. and C. Fuss (2004), “Islamic Banking Credit Products in Germany and in the United Kingdom,” European Business School, International University Schloß Reichartshausen, Working Paper No. 12, October.
Burns, R. (2004), “Supervisory Insights: Economic Capital and the Assessment of Capital Adequacy,” Supervisory Journal, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Capital Adequacy Standard for Institutions (Other than Insurance Institutions) Offering Only Islamic Financial Services, Exposure Draft No. 2 (2005) – (IFSB 2005b), Islamic Financial Services Board, March.
Chapra, M. and T. Khan (2000), “Regulation and Supervision of Islamic Banks,” Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Occasional Paper No. 3.
Cunningham, A. (2001), “Culture or Accounting: What are the Constraints for Islamic Finance in a Riba-based Global Economy?”, Moody’s Investor Service, Global Credit Research, January.
Diamond, D. and P. Dybvig (1983), “Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 91, No. 3, June, pp. 401–19.
Diamond, D. and R. Rajan (2000), “A Theory of Bank Capital,” Journal of Finance, Vol. 55, No. 6, December, pp. 2431–65.
Edwards, Franklin R. (1996), The New Finance: Regulation and Financial Stability, The AEI Press, Washington, D.C.
El Qorchi, M. (2005), “Islamic Gears Up,” Finance & Development, IMF Publication, Volume 42, No.4, December.
El-Hawary, D., W. Grais, and Z. Iqbal (2004), “Regulating Islamic Financial Institutions: The Nature of the Regulated,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 3227. March.
Gersbach, H. (2002), “The Optimal Capital Structure of an Economy,” Alfred-Weber-Institut, University of Heidelberg, Grabengasse, Germany.
Guiding Principles of Risk Management for Institutions (Other than Insurance Institutions) Offering Only Islamic Financial Services, Exposure Draft No. 1 (2005), Islamic Financial Services Board, March.
Honohan, P. (2004), “Financial Sector Policy and the Poor: Selected Findings and Issues,” World Bank Working Paper No. 43, The World Bank.
Iqbal, Z. (2000), “Risk and Risk Management in Islamic Finance,” International Seminar on Islamic Financial Industry, Alexandria, Egypt, October 15–18.
Iqbal, Z. (2005), “The Impact of Consolidation on Islamic Financial Services Industry,”
Working paper.
Khan, T. and H. Ahmed (2001), “Risk Management: An Analysis of Issues in Islamic Financial Industry,” Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Occasional Paper No. 5.
Klingebiel, D. and L. Laeven (eds.) (2002), “Managing the Real and Fiscal Effects of Banking Crises,” World Bank Discussion Paper No. 428, Washington, D.C.
Levine, R. (2004), “Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence,” NBER Working Paper No. 10766, Cambridge, www.nber.org/papers/w10766.
Modigliani, F. and M. Miller (1958), “The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment,” American Economic Review, Vol. 48, pp. 261–97.
Principles for the Management of Credit Risk (2000), Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, Basel, Switzerland, September.
Pringle, J.J. (1975), “Bank Capital and the Performance of Banks as Financial Intermediaries: Comment,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 7, No. 4, November, pp. 545–50.
Sundararajan, V. (2005), “Risk Measurement, and Disclosure in Islamic Finance and the Implications of Profit Sharing Investment Accounts,” Paper prepared for the Sixth International Conference on Islamic Economics, Banking, and Finance, Jakarta, Indonesia, November 22–24.
Sundararajan, V. and L. Errico (2002), “Islamic Financial Institutions in the Global Financial System: Key Issues in Risk Management and Challenges Ahead,” International Monetary Fund, Working Paper WP/02/192.
www.erisk.com/Learning/EconCap/econcap1.asp.
www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/siwin04/economic_capital.html.
Islamic Financial Terms
Shari’ah - Islamic canon law as revealed in the Qur’ân (the revelational text) and the Sunnah (examples given by the Prophet Mohammad).
Murabahah - credit sales (cost + mark up sale)
Musharakah – joint venture
Mudarabah – limited partnership – profit sharing investment accounts
Mudarib - agent/ financial institution offering financial services
Istisna’ – contract of manufacture
Ijarah – leasing
Riba - Interest
Gharar - uncertainty or risk
Wafik Grais and Anoma Kulathunga
*The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this chapter are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.
1. Introduction: Information, Risks, and Capital
Financial intermediation is a critical factor for growth and social inclusion. One of its core functions is to mobilize financial resources from surplus agents and channel them to those with deficits. It thus allows investor entrepreneurs to expand economic activity and employment opportunities. It also enables household consumers, micro- and small entrepreneurs to expand their own welfare and earnings opportunities, and seek to smooth their lifetime outlays. In all cases, financial intermediation drives economic growth and contributes to social inclusion, provided it is conducted in a sound and efficient way.
A financial intermediary’s ability to process information on risks and returns of investment opportunities will have a bearing on the soundness and efficiency of its resource mobilization and reallocation function. Conventional financial services (CFSs) process information through institutions or markets, and have generally evolved from the former to the latter. In both cases, markets and agents provide alternative ways of processing information on risks and returns of investment opportunities. In the first form, the intermediary raises capital to set up business to collect generally liquid deposits from surplus agents and reallocates these resources, now in his trust, to ones with deficits in generally less liquid assets. In the second form, surplus agents buy directly financial assets that represent a debt of a deficit agent or an ownership share in its business. In either approach, both categories of agents engage in transactions on the basis of trust and of expectations about the degree of liquidity that would provide the option to re-contract at a reasonable cost. In the case of banks, the trust can be seen as based on proprietary information. In the case of markets, the information is more commoditized and widely available.
Efficiently processed information can support the efficient allocation of capital. It can help a financial intermediary to better define the capital it would need to achieve the returns sought, while maintaining its ability to face the financial consequences of unexpected events that may endanger its stability. Banks engage in gathering and processing information on clients and markets, which allows them to manage different risks by unbundling them and reallocating the components. By performing these services soundly and efficiently, banks can manage to calibrate their capital requirements and receive diversified income streams. Thus a bank’s investors and customers can gain comfort as to its reliability in allowing them to access liquidity and maintain stability. In parallel with banks, financial markets can also convey the same sense of access to liquidity and stability based on disclosed and broadly available information on market participants. Markets can provide deficit and surplus agents a direct role in processing information to facilitate the unbundling and reallocation of risks and the efficient use of capital. Thus, banks and markets compete and complement each other in financial intermediation. The competition puts pressure on individual agents to use capital at their disposal efficiently, and results in a system-wide improved allocation of capital resources.
Institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFSs) also process information on risks and returns of investment opportunities while complying with Shari’ah principles. Thus, in principle, they can be expected to increase competition in financial information processing by inducing better risk management and capital use. Such competition can be expected over time to lead to an efficient use of capital at the level of each financial agent, whether they practice conventional or Islamic finance, and in aggregate, system-wide across all modes of financial intermediation. Efficient use of capital is thus a challenge which competition imposes on all financial intermediaries, whether offering Islamic financial services or conventional financial services. At the same time, Islamic financial intermediation needs to comply with Shari’ah principles, notably those of risk sharing and materiality of financial transactions. Shari’ah compliance, social responsibility, and the discipline of competition compound IIFSs’ challenge to process information efficiently in order to manage the risks they may face and use their capital endowments. Thus, by their very nature and the environment in which they generally operate, IIFSs need to be well equipped with the information and skills that can allow them to identify their capital resources and use them efficiently.
This chapter argues for the need for Islamic financial services to strengthen risk management practices in the process of defining their own capital requirements in accordance with their loss tolerance. It suggests that IIFSs could invest in the collection of loss information and adoption of loss data management systems. IIFSs would benefit from implementing risk management methodologies and adapting their staffing skills accordingly. The chapter starts in Section 2 by outlining views on the relationship between risk management and capital for financial intermediation. It then overviews risk categories as an initial step in risk management in Section 3. Section 4 discusses regulatory and economic capital, introducing risk occurrence frequency as a distribution probability. Section 5 concludes with suggestions on steps that may help with risk management and improve the competitiveness of IIFSs.
2. Bank Capital and Risk Management
Bank capital may be considered as consisting of (a) equity capital and (b) certain non-deposit liabilities or debt capital (see Section 4). It is both a means of funding earnings-generating assets and a stability cushion. From the perspective of efficiency and returns, capital is part of a bank’s funding that can be applied directly to the purchase of earning assets, as well as being used as a basis for leverage to raise other funds for expanding assets with the net benefit accruing to shareholders. From a perspective of stability, bank capital is a cushion for absorbing shocks of business losses and maintaining solvency, with benefits accruing to depositors and other stakeholders. Both financial intermediaries and regulators are sensitive to the dual role of capital, as a means of funding earnings-generating assets and as a cushion for dealing with unanticipated events. Financial intermediaries may tend to be more focused on the former role and regulators on the latter.
A bank’s capital structure decision relates to the ratio of capital to deposits and to the ratio of debt capital to equity capital. Its performance, in terms of return on equity capital, will be influenced by its ability to calibrate the level of capital it requires. Through efficient risk management, it can reach a sense of which capital structure can best help it to: (a) achieve profitability while maintaining stability; (b) reassure markets as to the quality of its business conduct; and (c) have a constructive dialogue with regulators.
Efficient use of capital will help IIFSs to achieve profitability and stability. Allocating capital resources to low-performing or excessively risky assets is bound to drag down performance, endanger stability, or both. Equally, leaving capital idle entails at best forgoing earnings opportunities. For instance, overly cautious approaches that lead financial intermediaries to maintain larger amounts of capital than warranted by their risk profile may not allow them either to obtain the full potential of their capital or to contribute effectively to the development of the communities they serve. At the other end of the spectrum, a financial intermediary overly eager to achieve returns may allocate resources to highly risky assets that offer high returns but endanger stability. Explicit risk management practices can help in the selection of assets to which capital and other resources are applied and calibrate the level of capital that best suits business objectives and stability tolerance.
The size and composition of the resources that capital enables financial intermediaries to raise are likely to affect their profitability and stability. In a frictionless world where full information is available and markets are complete, the value of a firm would be independent of its capital structure, and so the focus should be on capital level and not structure. Under such circumstances, the method by which a financial intermediary raises its required funds would be irrelevant. However, financial intermediaries do not operate in a frictionless world; they face imperfections such as costs of bankruptcy and financial distress, transaction costs, asymmetric information, or taxes. They also operate within the framework of a governing regulation possibly with a deposit insurance scheme that is expected to provide a safety net. In fact, one may contend that these market imperfections are the very reason for the successful existence of banks as financial intermediaries. Accordingly, not only a financial intermediary’s level of capital but also its structure is likely to bear on its market valuation, its business conduct, and its stability. Effective risk management strategies should contribute to a financial intermediary’s ability to assess not only the level of capital it would need in relation to assets and deposits, but also the extent to which its structure affects its value.
Market discipline contributes to responsible corporate behavior. Markets’ reactions to perceptions of a financial intermediary’s business conduct and capital strength may be unforgiving. It is thus in the interest of financial intermediaries to develop approaches to defining capital resource requirements that take into account the institutional environment in which they operate. The market’s perception of market imperfections is likely to influence views on the appropriate level of capital and the capital adequacy of financial intermediaries. For example, the availability of a safety net may lead market participants to be less demanding as to the need for capital in relation to bank assets. Conversely, anticipation of high costs of financial distress to depositors and other stakeholders may induce market participants to require the holding of more capital proportionally to assets. Similarly, wherever the institutional environment is weak and contract enforcement is uncertain and costly, markets may expect financial intermediaries to adapt the capital they hold.
The management of capital structure should in principle mitigate the risk of bank failures. When comparing a highly leveraged bank and a bank that is well capitalized, the leveraged bank will likely experience a greater loss of value during times of financial distress when the asset quality deteriorates, due to the increased risk of bankruptcy. To cope with downturns, in most countries banks hold a minimum amount of capital, based on the risk embedded in their asset holding. Accordingly, banks with relatively risky assets would hold a higher amount of capital than those banks with less risky assets. However, fearing the harshness of market discipline, many banks maintain a higher level of capital than the minimum required to allay the perception that they may be undercapitalized and avoid the losses this may induce, as witnessed in the 1980s. The key capital adequacy ratio provides an assessment of just how adequately the capital cushions such fluctuations in the bank’s earnings and supports higher assets growth.
Finally, efficient risk management should allow financial intermediaries to have a constructive dialogue with regulators. It would help them to articulate their views with respect to capital needs. The regulators’ rationale for regulating capital stems from the perception of the public-good nature of bank services, their potential macroeconomic growth and stability impact, and experience with costly bank failures. According to some estimates, such costs have varied between 3% and 55% of GDP. Thus, regulators’ concerns with possible systemic risk resulting from the contagion effects of bank runs lead them to seek to mitigate risks of financial distress with regulatory requirements on banks’ capital. Regulators’ concerns may be compounded by the presence of deposit insurance schemes. The moral hazard that may result from deposit insurance may lead to additional regulatory requirements such as linking the level of insurance premia to the risk embedded in assets and captured in associated risk weights. Indeed, deposit insurance may induce banks to lever up capital by expanding their own funding with liabilities, thus placing more risk on their capital and increasing their vulnerability. Efficient risk management practices would allow banks to improve their dialogue with the regulator and convey more convincingly their views on their soundness and capital requirements.
Regulators would generally also be concerned with the overall impact on the economy of the resources raised by the financial system under their purview. From an economy-wide perspective, banks may be viewed as firms’ competitors in raising capital on financial markets. The outcome of this competition has a bearing on economic performance and financial stability, and points to a cost–benefit tradeoff in holding capital. For instance, Gersbach (2002) suggests that a benefit of bank capital is the equity acting as a buffer against future losses, thereby reducing excessive risk taking of the banks. At the same time, raising bank capital may lead to a crowding out of industrial firms, limiting their access to equity and other market funding and also impacting their access to funding from banks and its cost. Furthermore, raising equity on markets may increase the cost of banks’ resources, inducing them to seek to invest in higher-yielding but more risky assets and thereby increasing their risk exposure. Thus, while potentially providing a cushion against unforeseen events, a higher level of equity may actually induce more risk taking, notably through raising the cost of funds to banks and their clients. Efficient risk management can provide inputs to both banks and regulators to better calibrate capital needs and deal with the foregoing type of tradeoff.
The level of a financial intermediary’s capital may also have a bearing on its ability to provide liquidity. The financial intermediary provides liquidity by funding assets that may be less liquid than the deposit resources it collects. There is a view that requirements for higher levels of capital may have a negative impact on liquidity creation. On the liability side, a higher capital requirement may lead to a corresponding reduction in the level of deposits, thus constraining the ability to provide liquidity. Also, higher capital requirements may induce financial intermediaries to be more restrained in extending financing, thus constraining their ability to provide liquidity. However, according to another view, higher capital would allow the financial intermediary to create more liquidity since its risk-absorptive capacity would be improved. In this regard, an empirical study concluded that for larger banks capital has a statistically significant positive net effect on liquidity creation, while for small banks this effect is negative. Accordingly, each financial intermediary would need to evaluate carefully the level and composition of the capital it needs, since the latter plays a significant role in its ability to function as a liquidity provider. Equally, regulators would need to pay attention to the impact which capital requirement would have on the funding of the economy.
IIFS’s risk management arrangements will bear on their ability to calibrate capital to their business objectives and risk tolerance, to deal with market discipline, and to maintain a dialogue with regulators. The IIFS’s characteristic of mobilizing funds in the form of risk-sharing investment accounts in place of conventional deposits, together with the materiality of financing transactions, may alter the overall risk of the balance sheet and, consequently, the assessment of their capital requirements. Indeed, risk-sharing “deposits” would in principle reduce the need for a safety cushion to weather adverse investment outcomes. Similarly, the materiality of investments is likely to modify the extent of their risk and have a bearing on the assessment for the overall need for capital; asset-based modes of finance may be less risky and profit-sharing modes more risky, than conventional interest-bearing modes. Nevertheless, IIFSs would operate within a regulatory framework that is likely to impose on them capital requirements with a view to promoting stability and limiting contagion risks. However, besides regulatory and market demands for IIFSs to hold capital, IIFSs need to put in place risk management assessments for their own purposes of returns and stability in accordance with the requirements of Shari’ah, their own mission statements, and the protection of their stakeholders.
3. Risk Identification and Risk Management
Efficient risk management capability is necessary to enable IIFSs to strategically position themselves in the global market by using their capital efficiently. Weak risk management systems may deprive IIFSs of the ability to hedge risks, and undermine their potential contribution to the communities they aim to serve. Adequate resources need to be devoted to risk identification and measurement, as well as to the development of risk management techniques. In this respect, there is a pressing need to combine solid understanding of Shari’ah law with a good knowledge of modern risk management techniques so as to be able to develop innovative risk mitigation and hedging instruments.
An initial step is a clear identification of risks that may arise in the conduct of Islamic financial intermediation. In carrying out their function, banks manage portfolios of assets and liabilities as well as their capital. Accordingly, each asset, each portfolio, and the intermediary as a whole are subject to risks. Exhibit 4.1 outlines the main risks intermediaries face under four broad categories. Each risk category captures the occurrence of some event that would affect the performance of an asset, a portfolio, or the whole balance sheet.
Exhibit 4.1 Outline of the risks facing financial intermediaries
Type of risk Rationale
Financial risk
Credit risk
The risk of counterparty failure to meet their obligations in a timely manner.
Interest rate risk (a) Risk of a reduction in the value of a fixed-interest asset (e.g. bond) due to a rise in interest rates (part of market risk, unless the asset is in the “banking book” – see (b)). (b) Risk of an interest rate mismatch between fixed-rate assets and floating-rate liabilities, or vice-versa, resulting in a profit and cash flow “squeeze.”
Market risk Risk common to entire class of assets or liabilities due to economic changes or external events (systemic risk, e.g. changes in stock market sentiment, interest rates, currency or commodity markets).
Liquidity risk Risk that arises from the difficulty of trading an asset (asset liquidity risk) and difficulty in obtaining funding at a reasonable cost (financing liquidity risk).
Settlement risk Risk that a counterparty does not deliver security or its value in cash as per agreement when the security is traded after other counterparty (ies) have delivered security or cash as per agreement.
Prepayment risk The risk of loans (especially mortgage loans) being prepaid before maturity due to a drop in interest rates.
Operational risk Risks associated with the potential for systems failure in a given market; usually resulting from inadequate internal processes and strategies, people, and systems, or from external events.
Business risk
Legal and regulatory risk Due to changes in the law and regulations that adversely affect a bank’s position.
Volatility risk Fluctuations in the exchange rate of currencies.
Equity risk Depreciation of investments due to stock market dynamics, etc.
Country risk Potential volatility of foreign assets due to political or financial events in a particular country.
Event risk
Unpredictable risks due to unforeseen events such as banking crises, contagion effects, and such other exogenous factors.
In extending financing and raising resources, IIFSs face risks similar to those encountered by their conventional counterparts, but with variations due to specific requirements to comply with Shari’ah. The requirement of materiality of the financing transaction and the prohibition of interest shape the nature of the instruments IIFSs can use and their embedded risk. The foregoing features also put constraints on IIFSs’ ability to manage liquidity, as they may not have recourse to repo facilities and interest-bearing instruments characteristic of money markets. In addition, the prohibition of gharar constrains the use of hedging instruments useful for asset–liability management. Furthermore, there may be operational risks in failing to ensure Shari’ah compliance. Exhibit 4.2 outlines the specific risks facing IIFSs.
Exhibit 4.2 Risks specific to Islamic financial services
Type of risk Rationale
Commodities and inventory risk Arising from holding items in inventory either for resale under a Murabaha contract, or with a view to leasing under an Ijara contract.
Rate of return risk Similar to interest rate risk in the banking book. However, IIFSs are not exposed to interest rate risk as such, but to a “squeeze” resulting from holding fixed-return assets such as Murabaha that are financed by investment accounts, the holders of which (investment account holders) expect a rate of return risk in line with benchmark rates. An increase in benchmark rates may result in investment account holders having expectations of a higher rate of return (see also mark-up risk).
Legal and Shari’ah compliance risk Risks associated with the potential for systems failure in a given market; usually resulting from inadequate internal processes and strategies, people, and systems, or from external events. This includes legal and Shari’ah compliance risk.
Equity position risk in the banking book Arises from the equity exposures in Mudaraba and Musharakah financing contracts.
Mark-up risk
(benchmark risk) Since IIFSs do not use interest, they use market rates as benchmarks in pricing their products. Hence, there is a risk associated with the changes to the benchmark rate (see rate of return risk).
Credit risk for IIFSs arises in connection with accounts receivable in Murabaha contracts, counterparty risk in Salam contracts, accounts receivable and counterparty risk in Istisna’a contracts, and lease payments receivable in Ijara contracts. On average across IIFS balance sheets, Murabaha appears to be the dominant mode of financing (41%), followed by Musharakah (11%), Mudarabah (12%), and Ijarah (10%). Thus the bulk of the financing may still essentially be trade financing, with more limited engagement in profit-sharing assets and leasing. Accordingly, it may still be the case that credit risk is the dominant risk IIFSs need to contend with.
A major cause of serious financial intermediaries’ potential distress continues to be lax credit standards for borrowers and counterparties, poor portfolio risk management, or a lack of attention to changes in economic or other external circumstances that can adversely impact the credit standing of a bank’s counterparties. It is notably the predominance of this credit risk that underlines the Basel II Accord’s recommendations of the three approaches to credit risk assessment for capital adequacy purposes: the Standardized Approach, the Foundation Internal Rating-Based (IRB) Approach, and the Advanced IRB Approach. In various degrees, these approaches provide banks with the opportunity to have their own credit risk assessment methodology contribute to the identification of capital needs. The better equipped a financial intermediary is in risk management, the more opportunity it would have to calibrate its capital needs and use its resources most efficiently, thus strengthening its competitive position. Accordingly, the quality of IIFSs’ risk management plays a critical role in determining their competitiveness.
In contrast to the foregoing, there may be a perception within IIFSs that the most critical risk they face may be the mark-up risk or rate of return risk. In order of importance, it would be followed by operational risk and liquidity risk. While credit risk is the predominant risk most financial intermediaries (whether CFS or IFS) deal with, surveyed IIFSs do not perceive it as being as severe as most other risks they identify. IIFSs appear to consider market risk as the least serious (see Exhibit 4.3).
Exhibit 4.3 Risk perception: Overall risks faced by Islamic financial institutions
Number of relevant responses Average rank*
Mark-up or rate of return risk 15 3.07
Operational risk 13 2.92
Liquidity risk 16 2.81
Credit risk 14 2.71
Market risk 10 2.50
* The rank has a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating “Not Serious” and 5 denoting “Critically Serious.”
Source: Adapted from Khan and Ahmed (2001).
A clear identification of the event and its translation into a measurable variable would be a prerequisite to render the notion of risk operationally relevant, in the sense of guiding actual business conduct. For example, an Ijarah contract on a movable asset may not be serviced according to the signed agreement. Assuming, for simplicity, that the contract may be only either serviced or not (that is, there is either no default in payment by the lessee, or there is default), then the risk variable becomes the occurrence of the event of default. It is an observable variable that may take a value of one if there is default and zero otherwise. Over time, observations on the risk profile of various instruments extended to various categories of IIFS clients can be developed. These statistical observations can be used to strengthen risk management and guide the extension of financing. Thus for each identified risk, there is a necessary step to translate it into an observable variable and set up a system to collect and maintain the relevant information, as well as to develop methodologies to process the information to guide decision making. Admittedly, not all possible risks may be anticipated and translated into an observable variable capturing the occurrence of an event. Furthermore, events may not be mutually independent, pointing also to the need to focus on their possible correlation, its observation and measurement. Experience with risk identification and management practices can only be helpful.
4. Regulatory and Economic Capital
Progress in risk management and evolving regulators’ and market participants’ views are prompting changes in the determination of capital requirements. Regulators may have been initially concerned mainly with depositors’ protection, stability and contagion issues, while financial intermediaries’ focus would have been essentially on business profitability and expansion. Accordingly, in initial approaches, regulators set a general rule, applying to all without much differentiation, requiring financial intermediaries to hold a minimum amount of capital. Regulators’ caution had led to what could be qualified as a relatively blunt capital adequacy rule. Flaws in the rule and a convergence of concerns between regulators and financial intermediaries led to other approaches better adapted to specific conditions of markets and intermediaries. Over time, regulators’ awareness of their role in market development expanded at the same time as financial intermediaries’ sense of corporate responsibility in promoting market stability. Progress in risk management approaches facilitated the evolution. Accordingly, regulation is evolving from rule-based, relatively blunt capital requirements to risk-based assessments of capital needs, or economic capital.
4.1 Regulatory Capital
From one perspective, capital is viewed as the funding source to be used to protect the parties who have claims on banking assets, such as depositors, against unexpected losses. In order to ensure that banks are sufficiently funded for that purpose, or adequately capitalized, regulators have come up with regulatory minimum capital requirements under Basel Capital Accords. The focus of the initial 1988 accord was on a cushion for credit risk. This was amended in 1996 to include capital requirements to cover market risks. However, during the late 1990s with the growth of securitization and credit derivatives some financial intermediaries resorted to regulatory arbitrage using regulatory inconsistencies to increase profitability (the return on capital) at the expense of capital adequacy. Another development was the resort to the rolling over of short-term loans whose risk weight was nil or negligible, thus increasing financial corporate fragility. Concerns about the evolving nature of risks and these developments prompted a review of the Basel I framework and motivated the development of the Basel II Accord. A major thrust was an emphasis on taking better account of the risk profile of the intermediary and its ability to manage risks in reaching a sense of its capital requirement. In addition, in the course of developing the Basel II framework, attention was given to operational risk and a related requirement for a capital cushion.
The capital adequacy pillar of the Basel II framework (Pillar I) proposes three alternative approaches (as mentioned above) to assessing the capital requirement to associate with credit risk. Risk weights to be used in respect of credit risk are obtained based on one of three models that rely more or less on the financial intermediary’s own internal risk rating. In the simple model, or standardized approach, the risk weighting system relies on external agency ratings of the borrowers. In a more elaborate model, the financial intermediary uses its own risk management model to obtain internal ratings. Whether externally or internally derived, the risk weights are used to obtain a value of the assets that incorporates credit, market, and operational risk. The banking institution would be expected to maintain a minimum capital to risk-weighted assets ratio of 8% at all times. Hence, regulatory capital requirement is linked directly to an assessment of the degree of risk of the assets a bank holds. Thus, to improve its capital adequacy ratio, a bank would have the option either to increase its capital or to reduce the risky assets it holds, or a combination of both. A contribution of the new Basel Accord is to insert alternative ways of assessing the risks associated with the assets held, with a larger role given to a bank’s own risk assessment if the regulator is satisfied with its ability to make such assessments. Salient features of the Basel II Accord are highlighted in Exhibit 4.4.
Exhibit 4.4 Salient features of the Basel II Accord
Capital requirement standards have been developed for IIFSs adapting conventional Basel approaches. A first guidance was given by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) recommending not including the risk-sharing account deposits in capital. Recently, the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) issued a capital adequacy standard based on the Basel II standardized approach with a similar approach to risk weights. However, the minimum capital adequacy requirements for both credit and market risks are set out for each of the Shari’ah-compliant financing and investment instruments. The IFSB standard (IFSB, 2005b) calls for supervisory discretion in determining a share “α” of risk-weighted assets funded by risk-sharing investment deposits that can be deducted from the total risk-weighted assets for the purpose of assessing capital adequacy. This share “α” represents the extent of total risk assumed by the investment account holders, with the remainder absorbed by the shareholders on account of displaced commercial risk. Like for CFSs, the minimum capital adequacy requirement for IIFSs in the IFSB standard is also not lower than 8% for total capital.
4.2 Definitions of Capital
Defining what constitutes capital has been a long-debated issue. However, there is wide acceptance of the capital structure that has been stipulated by the Basel committee, where capital is segregated into three categories, as set out in Exhibit 4.5.
Exhibit 4.5 Classification of capital in Basel accords
Classification Contents
Tier 1 (core capital)
Ordinary paid-up share capital/common stock, disclosed reserves from post-tax retained earnings, non-cumulative perpetual preferred stock (goodwill to be deducted).
Tier 2 (supplementary capital)
Undisclosed reserves, asset revaluation reserves, general provisions/general loan-loss provisions, hybrid (debt/equity) capital instruments, and subordinated term debts.1
Tier 3
Unsecured debt: subordinated and fully paid up, to have an original maturity of at least two years and not be repayable before the agreed repayment date unless the supervisory authority agrees.2
1 Eligible tier 2 capital may not exceed total tier 1 capital, and long-term subordinated debt may not exceed 50% of tier 1 capital.
2 This will be limited to 250% of a bank’s tier 1 capital, which is required to support market risks.
To be considered as adequately capitalized, requirements were set for the international banks in the G10 countries to hold a minimum total capital (tier 1 and tier 2) equal to 8% of risk-adjusted assets.
For IIFS, tier 1 capital would be the same as in CFSs. The reserves, however, would include the shareholders’ portion of the profit equalization reserve (PER), which is included in the disclosed reserves. In tier 2 capital, there would not be any hybrid capital instruments or subordinated debts as in CFSs, as these would bear interest and contravene Shari’ah principles. However, an issue is the treatment of unrestricted risk-sharing investment accounts that may be viewed as equity investments on a limited-term basis, in principle. In the debate on whether or not to include these accounts in tier 2 capital, the AAOIFI committee on capital adequacy concluded that it would not be appropriate to include the PSIA in tier 2 capital.
The Islamic Financial Services Board has taken a similar position. The IFSB Capital Adequacy Standard (IFSB, 2005b) calls for supervisory discretion in determining a share “α” of risk-weighted assets funded by profit-sharing investment “deposits” that can be deducted from the total risk-weighted assets for the purpose of assessing capital adequacy. This share “α” represents the extent of total risk assumed by the investment account holders, with the remainder absorbed by the shareholders on account of displaced commercial risk. As for CFSs, the minimum capital adequacy requirement for IIFSs in the IFSB standard is not lower than 8% of total capital.
The issue is of major importance, as IIFSs use profit-sharing investment “deposits” as a form of leverage (Archer and Karim, 2006; Al-Deehani, Karim, and Murinde, 1999). Such deposits not only expose IIFSs to operational risk; there is also the issue of “displaced commercial risk” mentioned above.
4.3 Economic Capital
“Economic capital” represents the emerging practice for measuring and reporting all kinds of risk across a financial organization. Regulators have gradually factored in market development concerns in setting capital adequacy requirements by incorporating improved assessments of the risks embedded in the assets held by financial institutions. The latter have developed improved tools to assess the risks of their assets and their modes of operations. These tools allow financial intermediaries to reach better assessments of the economic capital they may need to best match their profit objectives and risk tolerance. “Economic capital” would measure risk in terms of economic conditions, rather than potentially misleading regulatory or accounting rules. It is called economic capital as its identification involves converting a probability distribution of occurrences of risk events into an amount of possible losses for which capital charges may be required, in line with the institution’s target financial strength (for example, credit rating). As such, it should permit achieving higher economic efficiency in capital use.
Risks, such as those highlighted in the previous section, may lead in practice to expected as well as unexpected losses. Both would be based on the frequency of occurrence of an event and the loss that may be associated with it. For the purpose of calculating economic capital, the amount of expected losses is the average of the anticipated losses over a distinct period of time. This expectation should be formed using actual observations that normally happen in the conduct of normal business over a given period. The financial intermediary would factor these expected losses in its pricing and make corresponding adequate provisions. However, there are also losses that may not be part of the normal conduct of business and whose occurrence would be unexpected. They would be the outcome of a worst-case adverse event for which no specific provision can be made as part of normal business conduct. Here the actual losses would be expected to be large and exceed what normal pricing could cover. These unexpected losses may be so large that the financial intermediary may go on to default, but the frequency of occurrence of such catastrophic events would be expected to be very low under normal circumstances.
Exhibit 4.6 provides an illustration of a shape of a distribution of losses, highlighting the notion of expected and unexpected loss. The former is the mean or the average loss over a given period and may be covered by specific provisioning. Losses larger than expected losses would be expected to occur with increasingly lower frequency, the larger they are. Over a given period, covering such losses in all circumstances – that is, irrespectively of the expected frequency of their occurrence – would require a large volume of capital. It would be prohibitive from a business perspective, as costly capital would be locked in low-return-yielding investments, and accordingly be uneconomical. Thus, financial intermediaries and regulators interested in market vibrancy would be interested in identifying the level of economic capital that would provide a sufficient stability cushion without stifling the financial intermediary, given the expected frequency of unexpected losses over a certain period. Hence, in its management of unexpected risks, the financial intermediary may decide to conduct its business accepting that there may be, say, a chance of one in 100 of becoming insolvent in a given time period (say, in the next 12 months). It would just define its economic capital accordingly as that level of capital that would allow it to face unexpected losses whose probability of occurrence in the given time period may be not more than 99%.
In the above example, the 1% represents the probability that losses may exceed the economic capital. This type of loss may be due to a system shock that is rare, and hence not need to be covered by capital. In computing the economic capital, credit and operating risks could be estimated using the probability distribution of historical losses, while for market risk it is possible to calculate the daily value-at-risk and then convert it to an amount of economic capital. Thus, economic capital can reflect a comprehensive risk measurement addressing the full range of risks faced by the financial intermediary. It is a useful tool in the hands of the management of the financial intermediary, allowing it to calibrate the level of capital that is economical to hold in order to achieve return and stability objectives. Provided the implemented methodology is sound and robust as well as transparent, it can provide a valuable foundation for a constructive dialogue with regulators and other stakeholders that contributes further to market vibrancy and stability.
Exhibit 4.6 A probability distribution of losses
Source: Burns (2004).
For simplicity, assume that Exhibit 4.6 provides the probability distribution of losses associated with Murabaha contracts that finance trade within a 12-month period. The vertical axis on the left indicates the frequency of various levels of loss, and the horizontal axis at the bottom indicates the various amounts of losses that may occur. Thus, moving from the left to the right of the curve, the frequency of losses on those contracts initially increases with the size of losses; then, beyond a certain size of loss, it diminishes. Thus the expectation of losses over the period would be the sum of losses weighted by the expected frequency of their occurrence. However, larger losses may also occur but with lower and lower frequency as larger and larger sizes of losses are contemplated. Beyond a certain size of loss the intermediary would decide not to bother to cope with them and accept the possibility of not being able to protect its solvency. Beneath that size it would keep some economic capital reserve that would correspond to a measure of the sum of the difference between possible unexpected losses and expected losses, weighted by the frequency of occurrences of such differences. The foregoing approach could be extended to various types of contracts and elaborated to address correlations between risks, providing a comprehensive risk management tool.
While IIFSs’ and CFSs’ modes of intermediation, financial instruments, and risks may differ, the general approach would be applicable to both types of financial intermediaries. A better-circumscribed economic capital can allow IIFSs to manage their resources more efficiently while providing comfort to their stakeholders. A major difference between IIFSs and CFSs relates to investment account deposits. While for IIFSs, the expected losses would be borne by the income, as in CFSs, the risk capital needed to meet unexpected losses may be less for IIFSs since, theoretically, they accept investment deposits which are risk-sharing contracts. In principle, the Islamic financial intermediary would share in the profit as an agent–Mudarib with the depositor, but the latter would bear losses that are the outcome of market conditions but not of a Mudarib’s misconduct. Hence the risk-sharing feature of investment account deposits would reduce the overall risks for IIFSs in principle. Under the circumstances, and going back to the Murabaha contract illustration in the foregoing, the IIFS would be expected to conduct business in such a way as to deal with expected losses, pricing its products and accumulating provisions accordingly. The IIFS would identify economic capital to deal with unexpected losses that are due notably to misconduct. Unanticipated adverse events that are beyond the reasonable anticipation of the IIFS would normally not need to be cushioned, as profit-sharing investment account “depositors” would share the losses attributable to the assets (or the proportion of assets) financed by their funds.
In light of the above, the PER and investment risk reserve (IRR) may be considered in terms of the perspective of dealing with expected and unexpected losses to the extent that funds in these reserves provide cushions similar to capital. Pricing designed to cope with expected losses should limit the need for a PER to addressing errors in setting pricing and other such unexpected events. Similarly, the IRR could address unexpected losses (excluding those due to misconduct or negligence), as pricing would be expected to generate resources to fund provisions for expected losses. Investment account deposits, PER, IRR, and capital could usefully be considered within a comprehensive risk management framework in order for IIFSs to best calibrate their economic capital, strengthen their ability to compete, and maintain stability.
5. Conclusion
The chapter argues for developing and implementing risk management approaches and methodologies for IIFSs. Whether for the latter or CFSs, capital is both a core input for business development and a sustainability cushion against the consequences of unexpected adverse events. This double perspective entails a tradeoff in identifying the level and composition of capital a financial intermediary maintains. An over-emphasis on stability may stunt the intermediary’s vibrancy, while too much focus on business development may eventually jeopardize stability.
The evolution of regulators’ and market participants’ thinking is leading them increasingly to take more account of the intermediary’s risk profile and tolerance in assessing capital requirements. Technical innovations are allowing both to make professional progress in this direction. These developments are giving them better ways to calibrate the level and composition of capital requirements to balance more efficiently requirements of market development and stability. IIFSs cannot but gain in developing and adopting sound advanced risk management methodologies. They would allow them not only to achieve their business objective of profitability more easily, but also to cope better with the discipline which markets impose, as well as to conduct a beneficial and constructive dialogue with regulators.
Seeking to implement improved risk management practices entails as a first step an effort to identify clearly the risk categories an IIFS may face. These would then need to be translated into variables representing the occurrence of the risk events and the losses these may entail. Some probability distribution would then be associated with each category of risk to provide a framework for assessing the likelihood and extent of losses that may occur. Such a framework would also allow the IIFS to conceptualize the economic capital that corresponds to a level of risk tolerance. It would also provide an approach to setting pricing policies that would incorporate the losses that can be expected in the normal conduct of business.
Implementing a framework incorporating the foregoing features entails the availability of loss data that reflect their historical occurrences within given time periods. The richer the data set in terms of number of observations and their categorization, the better informed the risk management framework can be, the better the pricing policy and the more efficient the identification of the level and composition of capital. Accordingly, IIFSs (like other banks seeking to develop an IRB approach and other sophisticated risk measurement techniques) need to put in place data management systems to collect and process loss data. However, collecting a data set sufficiently large to provide robust inferences on the actual risk the IIFS faces may take some time. An option would be for IIFSs to join efforts and pool data sets to accelerate the process of improving their risk management practices. In parallel, IIFSs would be investing in enhancing the risk management skills available to them.
IIFSs are already engaged in strengthening their stability and competitiveness through improvements in risk management capabilities. Over time, these efforts should enable IIFS to reach assessments of their capital requirements that would permit them to use their resources efficiently and offer services that contribute effectively to the development of the communities they want to serve.
.
References
Al-Deehani, T., R.A.A Karim, and V. Murinde (1999), “The Capital Structure of Islamic Banks under the Contractual Obligation of Profit Sharing,” International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, pp. 243–83.
Allen, F. and D. Gale (2004), “Financial Intermediaries and Markets,” Econometrica, Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 1023–61.
Archer, S. (2005), “Adapting Basel II: The IFSB Draft Standard – Issues of Risk Bearing Capital and Risk Management,” Islamic Financial Services Forum, The European Challenge, Luxembourg, December.
Archer, S. and R.A.A. Karim (forthcoming 2006), “On Capital Structure, Risk Sharing and Capital Adequacy in Islamic Banks,” International Journal of Theoretical & Applied Finance.
Barth, R., G. Caprio, and R. Levine (2006), Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Berger, A. and C. Bouwman (2005), “Bank Capital and Liquidity Creation,” EFA 2005 Moscow Meetings Paper, June, http://ssrn.com/abstract=672784.
Bessis, J. (2002), Risk Management in Banking, John Wiley & Sons, London.
Burghardt, I. and C. Fuss (2004), “Islamic Banking Credit Products in Germany and in the United Kingdom,” European Business School, International University Schloß Reichartshausen, Working Paper No. 12, October.
Burns, R. (2004), “Supervisory Insights: Economic Capital and the Assessment of Capital Adequacy,” Supervisory Journal, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Capital Adequacy Standard for Institutions (Other than Insurance Institutions) Offering Only Islamic Financial Services, Exposure Draft No. 2 (2005) – (IFSB 2005b), Islamic Financial Services Board, March.
Chapra, M. and T. Khan (2000), “Regulation and Supervision of Islamic Banks,” Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Occasional Paper No. 3.
Cunningham, A. (2001), “Culture or Accounting: What are the Constraints for Islamic Finance in a Riba-based Global Economy?”, Moody’s Investor Service, Global Credit Research, January.
Diamond, D. and P. Dybvig (1983), “Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 91, No. 3, June, pp. 401–19.
Diamond, D. and R. Rajan (2000), “A Theory of Bank Capital,” Journal of Finance, Vol. 55, No. 6, December, pp. 2431–65.
Edwards, Franklin R. (1996), The New Finance: Regulation and Financial Stability, The AEI Press, Washington, D.C.
El Qorchi, M. (2005), “Islamic Gears Up,” Finance & Development, IMF Publication, Volume 42, No.4, December.
El-Hawary, D., W. Grais, and Z. Iqbal (2004), “Regulating Islamic Financial Institutions: The Nature of the Regulated,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 3227. March.
Gersbach, H. (2002), “The Optimal Capital Structure of an Economy,” Alfred-Weber-Institut, University of Heidelberg, Grabengasse, Germany.
Guiding Principles of Risk Management for Institutions (Other than Insurance Institutions) Offering Only Islamic Financial Services, Exposure Draft No. 1 (2005), Islamic Financial Services Board, March.
Honohan, P. (2004), “Financial Sector Policy and the Poor: Selected Findings and Issues,” World Bank Working Paper No. 43, The World Bank.
Iqbal, Z. (2000), “Risk and Risk Management in Islamic Finance,” International Seminar on Islamic Financial Industry, Alexandria, Egypt, October 15–18.
Iqbal, Z. (2005), “The Impact of Consolidation on Islamic Financial Services Industry,”
Working paper.
Khan, T. and H. Ahmed (2001), “Risk Management: An Analysis of Issues in Islamic Financial Industry,” Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Occasional Paper No. 5.
Klingebiel, D. and L. Laeven (eds.) (2002), “Managing the Real and Fiscal Effects of Banking Crises,” World Bank Discussion Paper No. 428, Washington, D.C.
Levine, R. (2004), “Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence,” NBER Working Paper No. 10766, Cambridge, www.nber.org/papers/w10766.
Modigliani, F. and M. Miller (1958), “The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment,” American Economic Review, Vol. 48, pp. 261–97.
Principles for the Management of Credit Risk (2000), Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, Basel, Switzerland, September.
Pringle, J.J. (1975), “Bank Capital and the Performance of Banks as Financial Intermediaries: Comment,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 7, No. 4, November, pp. 545–50.
Sundararajan, V. (2005), “Risk Measurement, and Disclosure in Islamic Finance and the Implications of Profit Sharing Investment Accounts,” Paper prepared for the Sixth International Conference on Islamic Economics, Banking, and Finance, Jakarta, Indonesia, November 22–24.
Sundararajan, V. and L. Errico (2002), “Islamic Financial Institutions in the Global Financial System: Key Issues in Risk Management and Challenges Ahead,” International Monetary Fund, Working Paper WP/02/192.
www.erisk.com/Learning/EconCap/econcap1.asp.
www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/siwin04/economic_capital.html.
Islamic Financial Terms
Shari’ah - Islamic canon law as revealed in the Qur’ân (the revelational text) and the Sunnah (examples given by the Prophet Mohammad).
Murabahah - credit sales (cost + mark up sale)
Musharakah – joint venture
Mudarabah – limited partnership – profit sharing investment accounts
Mudarib - agent/ financial institution offering financial services
Istisna’ – contract of manufacture
Ijarah – leasing
Riba - Interest
Gharar - uncertainty or risk
MASIH ADAKAH HARAPAN JAMBI BAGIAN BARAT
MASIH ADAKAH HARAPAN JAMBI BAGIAN BARAT
Dari data yang dikeluarkan oleh badan koordinasi penanaman modal daerah (BKPMD) Jambi, terlihat tampak bagaimana minimnya realisasi investasi di daerah Jambi bagian barat, persoalan yang relative klasik dan pelik bagi perkembangan ekonomi dan pembangunan daerah terpencil di Jambi, sebahagian besar daerah tersebut adalah Jambi bagian barat. Oleh karena itu tulisan ini mencoba menyegarkan kembali semangat pembangunan itu.
Di lihat dari jumlah perusahan di provinsi Jambi telah mencapai 1350 buah namun hanya mampu menyerap tenaga kerja sebanyak 60 ribuan tenaga kerja, sebahagian perusahan berada di bagian timur berjumlah sekitar 895 buah perusahan, hanya 279 buah perusahan berada di bagian barat Jambi. berarti sampai saat ini, perkembangan provinsi Jambi sangat bertumpu pada daerah yang dekat dengan ibukota provinsi Jambi.
Kemampuan mengeksploitasi sumberdaya alam yang dimilikinya masih minim, di bagian barat Jambi terdapat beberapa potensi sumberdaya alam yang belum dikembangkan secara optimal, baik dilihat dari aspek pemanfaatannya bagi pembangunan daerah dan wilayah maupun dilihat dari aspek pembangunan yang berkelanjutan demi terciptanya kesejahteraan masyarakat.
Penulis telah melakukan penelitian tentang Investasi PMDN, PMA dan pengangguran di Jambi, ditemukan beberapa hasil prediksitif bahwa temuan itu cukup mengembirakan bagi kita, di mana pada tahun 2005 dan 2010 realisasi investasi di Jambi akan meningkat, namun peningkatan nilai investasi tersebut hanya dapat terjadi jika pengelolaan dana investasinya dilakukan berlandaskan pada kondisi sosio-ekonomi Jambi pada tahun-tahun yang akan datang yang terkait persoalan promosi, menghapus semua aturan yang menghambat (sebagaimana pendapat pakar dan dosen fakultas ekonomi Univesitas Jambi, Dr. Rachmad, SE.ME), di mana kepentingan investor juga akan mendukung adanya investasi pada tahun-tahun mendatang, apalagi investor akan terus memantau perkembangan usaha, politik dan kemajuan sosial budaya masyarakat, karena soal investasi bukan hal yang mudah namun mencakup banyak hal yang komplek dan paradok.
Juga telah ditemukan beberapa realitas yang terjadi di Jambi pada tahun-tahun yang lalu di mana:
1. Investasi di Jambi lebih banyak terserap pada sektor industri dan konglomerasi besar, pengelolaan investasi yang monopolistik terukur dengan belum terbukanya akses bagi masyarakat untuk secara kolektif mengelola dana investasi dan belum adanya upaya untuk membentuk perserikatan yang adil dalam mengelola dana investasi.
2. Belum optimalnya kebijakan pemerintah daerah dalam membuka akses yang besar untuk mengembangkan UKM dan IKM di Jambi dengan dana investasi yang mengarah pada kepentingan pengembangan ekonomi kerakyatan. Tentu hal ini tidak akan meluaskan industri-industri kecil yang padat karya, komposisi atau paduan output sangat mempengaruhi jangkauan kesempatan kerja (terutama barang-barang konsumsi pokok) membutuhkan lebih banyak tenaga kerja.
3. Investasi hanya mengarah pada bagian timur Jambi seperti beberapa kabupaten yang dekat dengan pusat ibukota Jambi dan belum merambah merata di ke semua daerah tingkat dua, kondisi ini melahirkan monopoli baru dan masyarakat di bagian barat provinsi Jambi cenderung diabaikan, sehingga terjadi akselerasi urbanisasi di Propinsi Jambi. Kondisi ini berakibat tidak seimbangnya ekonomi kota-desa, kesimbangan ekonomi yang layak bagi kota dan desa juga tidak tercipta. Strategi keseimbangan antara kota dan desa ini cukup penting untuk menanggulagi masalah pengangguran di pedesaan maupun di perkotaan.
4. Belum berubahnya keterkaitan langsung antara pendidikan dan kesempatan kerja, munculnya penomena pengangguran berpendidikan mengundang pertanyaan tentang kelayakan pengembangan pendidikan secara besar-besaran dan kelewat batas.
5. Dari sisi eksternal menunjukkan pengembangan investasi masih dihadapkan pada beberapa kendala, kendala tersebut berasal dari pihak pemerintah selaku pemilik otoritas birokrasi dan penyedia sarana dan prasarana pendukung investasi. Disamping itu juga berperan sebagai penyedia informasi dan promotor dalam mempromosikan potensi daerah untuk menarik minat investor melalui kebijakan yang kompetitif.
Harian umum Singgalang juga telah membuka opini yang patut diperhatikan dan direalisasikan demi keberlangsungan daerah barat dari Provinsi Jambi, di mana telah ditemukan daerah barat yang minim sarana inprastruktur dan suprastruktur tidak mudah mendapatkan dana investasi yang besar, kemajuan daerah barat provinsi ini seolah dianaktirikan.
Oleh karena itu ke empat program utama pemerintah daerah Jambi yang lalu menjadi program utama untuk pembangunan Jambi di 5 tahun ke depan, paling tidak ada kesepakatan bersama untuk membangun Jambi dari barat, tidak ada satu alasan pun yang dapat terus melupakan daerah tersebut. Oleh karena itu keberlangsungan pembangunan yang lebih konkrit untuk bagian barat menjadi lebih konkrit pada: pertama, restrukturisasi organisasi pemerintah daerah yang memungkinkan membagi tugas wakil gubernurnya untuk bagian barat, hal ini dibutuhkan seorang yang memiliki spirit growth with equity sehingga pembangunan menjadi tidak tersesat ke dalam lubang yang salah, kedua, promosi daerah barat terus dilakukan dengan upaya dokumentasi yang berorientasi pada pasar (market oriented) diteruskan dan yang bersifat project oriented dihentikan. Ketiga, pembagian kue kekuasan itu dengan mempertimbangankan sense of belonging pada daerah barat dan sangat memahami karakternya.
Potret Jambi hari ini meningkatnya pengangguran di daerah barat Jambi yang disebabkan oleh pertama, semakin berkurangnya ladang hidup masyarakat yang disebabkan pertumbuhan penduduk lebih cepat ketimbang pertumbuhan lapangan pekerjan, yang masih berlangsung lapangan pekerjaan dengan pola lama (agraris), kedua, terus bertambahnya penduduk bagian barat yang hijrah dan mengundi nasib di bagian timur pada daerah-daerah yang lebih banyak perusahan yang lebih banyak investasi yang masuk, dan telah berlangsung lama dan yang terbarupun masih jalan ditempat dengan tidak meratanya investasi seperti kota Jambi. Muara Jambi, Batang Hari Dan Tanjung Jabung. Jika hal ini terus diabaikan akan menjadi preseden buruk. Kondisi terburuk mungkin terjadi adalah penumpukan penduduk di bagian timur yang berakibat pada meningkatnya kesulitan dalam melangsungkan kehidupan.
Akses untuk mendapatkan pekerjaan menjadi relativ lebih sulit dan pengembangan tata kota ibukota provinsi akan rusak dan yang lebih ektrem stabilitas sosial ekonomi akan terganggu karena meningkatnya pengangguran di kota.
Hal ini terjadi karena tidak seimbangnya pembangunan daerah (kota-desa), terlihat Potensi Resourhes Jambi bagian barat yang masih genuine terabaikan, tidak dipungkiri sebagian telah dieksploitasi oleh Perusahaan-perusahaan asing atas nama kepentingan masyarakat namun kebijakan pemilik modal (Investor) dan pemerintahan daerah sering kali tidak “aspiratif” sehingga sering terjadi konflik sosial antara pemilik modal dan masyarakat local. Akan terus terjadi bila dalam penyelesaiannya pihak-pihak terkait memutuskan police yang tak berbasis pada nilai-nilai pemerataan dan keadilan. Bahkan Keputusannya pun cenderung menguntungkan pemilik modal, daripada berpihak kemasyarakat local.
Pemda harus menetapkan suatu metode yang relevan dengan semangat untuk mensejahterakan masyarakat dan meningkatkan pendapatan minimum masyarakat skala mikro lebih diprioritaskan dan sector riil juga lebih dikuatkan dan 5 tahun ke depan pembangunan ekonomi di Jambi lebih fokus pada frame peningkatan kesejahteraan, keadilan dan keselamatan sumber daya alam itu sendiri.
Disamping itu sebagai kontrol maka dipilihlah beberapa indicator yang memungkinkan diantaranya apakah menurun tingkat kemiskinan dan kesenjangan pendapatan di bagian barat, apakah meningkat pertumbuhan ekonomi berbasis ekonomi kerakyatan, apakah terwujud supremasi hukum, HAM dan Pemerintahan yang baik, apakah terwujud masyarakat yang sejahtera, beriman, bertaqwa dan berbudaya.
Beberapa indicator di atas akan menjadi acuan untuk menentukan arah kebijakan pemerintah Jambi, antara investasi dan upaya pengurangan jumlah pengangguran di Jambi bagian barat masa akan datang dalam prespektif ekonomi Islam untuk kasus Jambi adalah:
- Kebijakan-kebijakan Investasi Pemerintah Daerah Jambi seyogyanya difokuskan pada pemenuhan kebutuhan masyarakat Jambi akan peluang kerja yang memadai dengan kemampuan personal yang mendukung.
- Adanya Peraturan daerah yang mendorong percepatan dan pembukaan peluang kerja sehingga masalah penganguran di Jambi akan cepat teratasi, rumusan Perda yang ditawarkan bersifat mengikat dan memenuhi prinsip-prinsip amanah sebagai landasan menjalankan Perda tersebut.
- Kebijakan Investasi untuk masa datang adalah kebijakan yang harus memperhatikan dan memahami bahwa nilai investasi yang besar tidak berarti jika alirannya tidak mengarah pada kebutuhan yang mendesak bagi masyarakat, dibutuhkan modal yang padat fungsinya dan bentuknya sehingga dalam pengelolaan tidak terjadi masalah seperti mubazir dan isrof. Perhitungan secara matematis dan dinamis ditentukan dahulu dengan mengedepankan prinsip cooperatif dalam pengelolaan dana investasi yang terarah pada investasi padat karya dengan akad musyarakah.
- Strategi baru yang diperlukan ialah tentang realokasi sumber daya manusia dan alam serta dana melalui reformasi politik RAPBD yang sama sekali harus mengutamakan kepentingan rakyat terukur menurut sasaran terpenuhinya kebutuhan pokok itu. Pada gilirannya harga kebutuhan pokok yang adil, baik untuk barang maupun jasa, oleh masyarakat luas akan terjangkau. Dalam kaitan ini maka politik kompensasi harus ditujukan kepada mereka yang memproduksi kebutuhan pokok tersebut di atas. Petani tanaman pangan dan kelompok miskin lainnnya harus terlebih dahulu menerima kompensasi ini berupa : pembebasan biaya pendidikan bagi anak-anaknya selama sembilan tahun, bebas dari biaya pengobatan, bebas dari pembayaran untuk penerangan listrik, dan tersedianya air yang cuma-cuma untuk keperluan sehari-harinya.
Rajin Pangkal Pandai, Hemat Pangkal Kaya, Enak Pangkal PAHA.
-
Pilkada dan harapan kaum miskin Jambi
Pilkada dan harapan kaum miskin Jambi
Tulisan pheni khalid tentang polisi cepek (2001) yang menginsipirasi tulisan ini, Sopir angkot adalah sebuah pekerjaan di sector informal, pekerjaan ini yang dalam kesehariannya lebih ditujukan pada pemenuhan kebutuhan hidupnya.
Hampir dapat dipastikan bahwa pembicaraan tentang sopir angkot sering dikaitkan dengan kemiskinan. Dengan kata lain, potensi ekonomi mereka lemah dan kurang mempunyai kemampuan untuk memperbaiki kondisi dan lingkungan hidup. Ada kecendrungan mereka pasrah serta apatis menghadapi masa depan dan menyerah pada nasib (lewis, 1969). Oleh karena itu, dalam perencanaan penataan ruang perkotaan keberadaan mereka cenderung diabaikan, sehingga kepentingan mereka sering dikorbankan untuk kepentingan masyarakat kota yang lain.
Kaum miskin di kota bekerja keras, mempunyai aspirasi tentang kehidupan yang baik dan motivasi untuk memperbaiki nasib. Upaya yang mereka lakukan adalah menciptakan lapangan pekerjaan sendiri dan berusaha memperbaiki nasib dengan berupaya beralih dari satu pekerjaan ke pekerjaan lain (Sethuraman, 1981: 198; breman, 1985: 1740). Golongan miskin, meskipun sebagian besar mencari nafkah di sector informal, penghasilan keluarga mereka tidak jauh berbeda dengan kelompok bawah pekerja sektor formal. Atas dasar pandangan ini maka potensi ekonomi mereka perlu dipertimbangkan dalam proses pembangunan perkotaan.
Struktur Pekerjaan.
Pekerjaan merupakan variabel paling sulit diterangkan dan dikelompokkan karena begitu beranekaragam, terutama bagi masyarakat miskin yang urban di perkotaan.
Ada dua hal yang perlu dijelaskan dalam tulisan ini dengan mengklasifikasi pekerjaan. Pertama, klasifikasi ISCO tidak membedakan antara pegawai negeri dan pegawai swasta untuk jenis pekerjaan yang sama. Kedua, status pekerjaan diperhatikan secara khusus dalam analisis. Dalam hal ini dibedakan antara mereka yang bekerja untuk pemerintah atau perusahaan.
Sopir taksi dan sopir angkot (yang bekerja untuk seorang majikan dengan system pembayaran berdasarkan setoran) dan sopir mobil, bis atau truk yang bekerja untuk perusahaan dengan gaji yang dibayar menurut setiap perjalanan atau secara tetap setiap minggu atau bulan. Kedua kelompok sopir ini diduga mempunyai tingkat dan stabilitas penghasilan serta jam kerja yang berbeda. Sopir angkot agak cocok dikelompokkan sebagai sector informal daripada formal. Dapat ditambahkan bahwa karena pentingnya tukang ojek di kota-kota, kelompok ini diberikan kode khusus sebagai pekerja angkutan.
Masalah social-ekonomi sopir
Sebuah tradisi yang selalu dirasakan dalam dunia sopir, dimana komunitas sopir ini lebih suka berkumpul dalam lingkup etnis masing-masing, sifat kedesaannya yang dibangun membuat mereka sering tertutup dengan masyarakat lain, pergaulan atas dasar kepentingan ekonomi semata bila mereka bergaul dengan kelompok yang lain.
Kaum miskin di Jambibiasanya timbul, tumbuh dan berkembang disebabkan secara politik terpinggirkan, seringkali mereka dianggap sebagai sebuah penyangga dalam system kekuasaan, bangunan sistem jauh sekali dari nilai nilai kemanusian namun terkadang apakah dapat dianggap adil jika kita telah memberi 0,00..% kekuasaan dan kekayaan kita, jauh lebih kecil nilainya dari apa yang pernah kita dapatkan dari mereka, dan pendapatan itupun terkadang kita lupa.
Dampak industrialisasi di pedesaan beberapa decade ini membantu akselarisasi urbanisasi, akan juga berpengaruh pada pembentukan struktur ruang kerja informal tidak sah dengan peningkatan ruang kerja tersebut telah melampaui batas dan mengkhawatirkan.
Peningkatan untuk beberapa tahun terakhir ini, mengakibatkan pada permintaan bursa kerjanya, yang dalam hal ini telah menciptakan kesulitan yang mendalam bagi pemerintah dalam menentukan kebijakan sector ini. Kesulitan ini berkaitan masalah penangganan dengan pendekatan memberikan peluang kerja, PKT, JPS dan maupun dari instansi-instansi social lainnya ternyata belum mampu menciptakan bursa kerja informal baru yang sah.
Apalagi berkenaan dengan upaya pengembangan dan penguatan masyarakat, lemahnya pilihan taktis dan strategis dalam upaya pemecahan problem kaum miskin di perkotaan, sehingga yang terjadi justru penegakan kepentingan elit dan lebih mengejar target politik saja dan pemecahan masalahpun terkesan setengah hati.
Kaum-kaum miskin di perkotaan, dengan beberapa masalah, cita-cita atau impian mereka, di antara masalah dan impian itu adalah ;
1. Kelembagaan di tingkat mereka yang masih lemah dengan kemampuan personal yang belum mengerti arah, tujuan, harapan dan cita-cita hidup dan sulit mengangkat martabat dan status social mereka.
2. Kaum miskin kota belum mampu mandiri untuk mengangkat status social-ekonomi mereka sehingga cenderung ketergantungan pada pihak-pihak pemilik modal, sedangkan para pemilik modal memiliki kecenderungan mendiskriminasi, melecehkan, memaksa yang jauh dari nilai-nilai kemitraan dan kemanusian dimana yang seharusnya antara pemilik modal dan pihak pekerja adalah mitra.
3. Kebutuhan akan Penguatan komunitas secara lembaga dan personal bertujuan agar di masa yang akan datang masalah-masalah diskriminasi kebijakan yang terjadi di komunitas ini akan berubah dan masyarakat miskin di Jambibisa berdaya dan mandiri.
Masyarakat miskin di Jambi itu unik dengan berbagai problematika sosialnya, perlu untuk dikupas akar masalah dan merumuskan solusi terbaik bagi kesejahteraan mereka, mengembangkan system nilai solidaritas sosial pasca pilkada.
Pasca Pilkada ini diharapkan dapat memberi nuansa baru dalam gerakan pemberdayaan masyarakat miskin bersama-sama dengan komunitas miskin yang punya kepedulian dalam pengembangan dan penguatan Masyarakat miskin tersebut, lihat saja salah satu yang kita anggap masyarakat miskin yaitu komunitas sopir angkot.
Masalah-masalah sosial-politik dan ekonomi yang merupakan bagian dari masalah sopir ini diantaranya pertama, Penambahan armada yang terus saja terjadi sebagaimana kebutuhan pemilik modal, dan terkadang tidak mementingkan para sopir, kedua, Peremajaan mobil yang tidak pernah diindahkan oleh para pemilik modal, walau aturan dari organda telah membuat aturan tentang peremajaan mobil per 10 tahun.
Tulisan pheni khalid tentang polisi cepek (2001) yang menginsipirasi tulisan ini, Sopir angkot adalah sebuah pekerjaan di sector informal, pekerjaan ini yang dalam kesehariannya lebih ditujukan pada pemenuhan kebutuhan hidupnya.
Hampir dapat dipastikan bahwa pembicaraan tentang sopir angkot sering dikaitkan dengan kemiskinan. Dengan kata lain, potensi ekonomi mereka lemah dan kurang mempunyai kemampuan untuk memperbaiki kondisi dan lingkungan hidup. Ada kecendrungan mereka pasrah serta apatis menghadapi masa depan dan menyerah pada nasib (lewis, 1969). Oleh karena itu, dalam perencanaan penataan ruang perkotaan keberadaan mereka cenderung diabaikan, sehingga kepentingan mereka sering dikorbankan untuk kepentingan masyarakat kota yang lain.
Kaum miskin di kota bekerja keras, mempunyai aspirasi tentang kehidupan yang baik dan motivasi untuk memperbaiki nasib. Upaya yang mereka lakukan adalah menciptakan lapangan pekerjaan sendiri dan berusaha memperbaiki nasib dengan berupaya beralih dari satu pekerjaan ke pekerjaan lain (Sethuraman, 1981: 198; breman, 1985: 1740). Golongan miskin, meskipun sebagian besar mencari nafkah di sector informal, penghasilan keluarga mereka tidak jauh berbeda dengan kelompok bawah pekerja sektor formal. Atas dasar pandangan ini maka potensi ekonomi mereka perlu dipertimbangkan dalam proses pembangunan perkotaan.
Struktur Pekerjaan.
Pekerjaan merupakan variabel paling sulit diterangkan dan dikelompokkan karena begitu beranekaragam, terutama bagi masyarakat miskin yang urban di perkotaan.
Ada dua hal yang perlu dijelaskan dalam tulisan ini dengan mengklasifikasi pekerjaan. Pertama, klasifikasi ISCO tidak membedakan antara pegawai negeri dan pegawai swasta untuk jenis pekerjaan yang sama. Kedua, status pekerjaan diperhatikan secara khusus dalam analisis. Dalam hal ini dibedakan antara mereka yang bekerja untuk pemerintah atau perusahaan.
Sopir taksi dan sopir angkot (yang bekerja untuk seorang majikan dengan system pembayaran berdasarkan setoran) dan sopir mobil, bis atau truk yang bekerja untuk perusahaan dengan gaji yang dibayar menurut setiap perjalanan atau secara tetap setiap minggu atau bulan. Kedua kelompok sopir ini diduga mempunyai tingkat dan stabilitas penghasilan serta jam kerja yang berbeda. Sopir angkot agak cocok dikelompokkan sebagai sector informal daripada formal. Dapat ditambahkan bahwa karena pentingnya tukang ojek di kota-kota, kelompok ini diberikan kode khusus sebagai pekerja angkutan.
Masalah social-ekonomi sopir
Sebuah tradisi yang selalu dirasakan dalam dunia sopir, dimana komunitas sopir ini lebih suka berkumpul dalam lingkup etnis masing-masing, sifat kedesaannya yang dibangun membuat mereka sering tertutup dengan masyarakat lain, pergaulan atas dasar kepentingan ekonomi semata bila mereka bergaul dengan kelompok yang lain.
Kaum miskin di Jambibiasanya timbul, tumbuh dan berkembang disebabkan secara politik terpinggirkan, seringkali mereka dianggap sebagai sebuah penyangga dalam system kekuasaan, bangunan sistem jauh sekali dari nilai nilai kemanusian namun terkadang apakah dapat dianggap adil jika kita telah memberi 0,00..% kekuasaan dan kekayaan kita, jauh lebih kecil nilainya dari apa yang pernah kita dapatkan dari mereka, dan pendapatan itupun terkadang kita lupa.
Dampak industrialisasi di pedesaan beberapa decade ini membantu akselarisasi urbanisasi, akan juga berpengaruh pada pembentukan struktur ruang kerja informal tidak sah dengan peningkatan ruang kerja tersebut telah melampaui batas dan mengkhawatirkan.
Peningkatan untuk beberapa tahun terakhir ini, mengakibatkan pada permintaan bursa kerjanya, yang dalam hal ini telah menciptakan kesulitan yang mendalam bagi pemerintah dalam menentukan kebijakan sector ini. Kesulitan ini berkaitan masalah penangganan dengan pendekatan memberikan peluang kerja, PKT, JPS dan maupun dari instansi-instansi social lainnya ternyata belum mampu menciptakan bursa kerja informal baru yang sah.
Apalagi berkenaan dengan upaya pengembangan dan penguatan masyarakat, lemahnya pilihan taktis dan strategis dalam upaya pemecahan problem kaum miskin di perkotaan, sehingga yang terjadi justru penegakan kepentingan elit dan lebih mengejar target politik saja dan pemecahan masalahpun terkesan setengah hati.
Kaum-kaum miskin di perkotaan, dengan beberapa masalah, cita-cita atau impian mereka, di antara masalah dan impian itu adalah ;
1. Kelembagaan di tingkat mereka yang masih lemah dengan kemampuan personal yang belum mengerti arah, tujuan, harapan dan cita-cita hidup dan sulit mengangkat martabat dan status social mereka.
2. Kaum miskin kota belum mampu mandiri untuk mengangkat status social-ekonomi mereka sehingga cenderung ketergantungan pada pihak-pihak pemilik modal, sedangkan para pemilik modal memiliki kecenderungan mendiskriminasi, melecehkan, memaksa yang jauh dari nilai-nilai kemitraan dan kemanusian dimana yang seharusnya antara pemilik modal dan pihak pekerja adalah mitra.
3. Kebutuhan akan Penguatan komunitas secara lembaga dan personal bertujuan agar di masa yang akan datang masalah-masalah diskriminasi kebijakan yang terjadi di komunitas ini akan berubah dan masyarakat miskin di Jambibisa berdaya dan mandiri.
Masyarakat miskin di Jambi itu unik dengan berbagai problematika sosialnya, perlu untuk dikupas akar masalah dan merumuskan solusi terbaik bagi kesejahteraan mereka, mengembangkan system nilai solidaritas sosial pasca pilkada.
Pasca Pilkada ini diharapkan dapat memberi nuansa baru dalam gerakan pemberdayaan masyarakat miskin bersama-sama dengan komunitas miskin yang punya kepedulian dalam pengembangan dan penguatan Masyarakat miskin tersebut, lihat saja salah satu yang kita anggap masyarakat miskin yaitu komunitas sopir angkot.
Masalah-masalah sosial-politik dan ekonomi yang merupakan bagian dari masalah sopir ini diantaranya pertama, Penambahan armada yang terus saja terjadi sebagaimana kebutuhan pemilik modal, dan terkadang tidak mementingkan para sopir, kedua, Peremajaan mobil yang tidak pernah diindahkan oleh para pemilik modal, walau aturan dari organda telah membuat aturan tentang peremajaan mobil per 10 tahun.
Dari Moral dan Etika Menuju Teologi Ekonomi Islam
“Dari Moral dan Etika Menuju Teologi Ekonomi Islam”
Oleh: Sucipto
Penulis adalah Mahasiswa Program Pasca Sarjana
Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta
Perkembangan ekonomi Islam di Indonesia telah di mulai di tahun 1992 dengan berdirinya Bank Muamalat Indonesia, dengan berdirinya bank muamalat, maka bank-bank yang tidak menerapkan sistem bagi hasil dalam transaksinya mulai beralih membentuk bank yang berbasis syariah ini, fhenomena ini mulai tanpak diakhir dan awal tahun 2000-an.
Tanggapan positifpun datang silih berganti hingga BI sebagai lembaga regulasi perbankan nasional yang pada awalnya “wait and see“ mulai serius dengan membentuk biro syariah di bank Indonesia.
Dalam praktek sehari-hari secara formal memakai pakaian yang islami dan ini wajar sebagi service bagi pelanggan namun sisi yang lain soal etika dan moral dalam ekonomi apakah juga sesuai dengan prinsip-prinsip ekonomi Islam. Hal ini penting sebab Islam tidak hanya mementingkan lahiriyah tetapi harus juga sejalan dengan bathiniah, sebab hal ini menyangkut soal keadilan dan ihsan dalam perilaku ekonomi kita.
Soal moral dan etika awal kita berpijak dalam mengembangkan ekonomi Islam baik di dunia perbankan ataupun dalam aktivitas ekonomi sehari-hari, karena kita saat ini sedang berada pada zaman industrialisasi yang pondasinya adalah kemajuan ekonomi, mungkin tanpa pertimbangan (menyangkut) moral dan etika apalagi agama, sebab semenjak keynes mengembangkan teori of interest maka dunia telah mengalami kegagalan ekonomi.
Lalu bagaimana dengan ekonomi Islam? sangat penting untuk menguji alternatif Islam dalam sistem perekonomian saat ini, dengan kreatifitas untuk menginterpretasikan doktrin dan prinsip tertentu yang ditentukan oleh Islam yang berkenaan dengan masalah sosial ekonomi, jika Islam dapat menyelesaikan problem ekonomi yang telah terwarisi selama ribuan generasi akan dapat memecahkan berbagai kesulitan ekonomi dalam zaman industri itu. Satu kata kunci di sini adalah Al-Quran, sumber dari prinsip Islam yang mengajarkan kita dengan memberi petunjuk yang luas mengenai aspek spritual dan aspek sosial. Dan juga memberikan suatu konsep tentang masyarakat di mana konsep masyarakat tersebut diilhami dari prinsip dasar Islam: dengan merestrukturisasi dan reformulasi konsep, jika perlu, yang tentu secara sah diterima oleh ahli ilmu agama di sepanjang zaman.
Moral dan etika ekonomi Islam dalam Al-Qur’an terbentuk dalam dua hubungan yaitu kontektual dan transendental. Dimana Islam secara kontektual di dalam Al-Qur’an menekankan pada perdagangan (tijarah) yang baik, jujur, dan syahid kepada Allah. Dengan mengecam praktek yang tidak jujur dan tidak adil dalam usaha untuk mendapat kekayaan.
Kejujuran dalam melakukan transaksi ekonomi dan mengutuk ekploitasi atas tenaga dan skill manusia. Karena itu Al Qur’an memberi kita konsep masyarakat bebas dari ekploitasi, ekploitasi adalah bagian dari kezhaliman dan bertentangan dengan keadilan, dimana dalam ekploitasi terdapat ketidakadilan.
Sedangkan Aspek Islam yang transendental concern terhadap prinsip–prinsip ekonomi. Baik transaksi perdagangan ataupun produksi harus bebas dari ekploitasi, karena konsep al-'adl dan al-ihsan (kebajikan dan keadilan) telah ditegaskan di dalam Al-Qur’an katakan: “Allah menyuruh kamu untuk berbuat keadilan dan kebajikan”. Konsep ini akan mengantarkan kita dalam meminimalisir ketegangan sosial antara kaya dan miskin, karena apabila keadilan dan ihsan tidak ditegakkan akan terjadi social-chaos.
Konsep ‘adl dan ihsan tidak bisa terjadi bila kekayaan masih terkonsentrasi pada minoritas masyarakat. Sebab dengan terkonsentrasinya kekayaan itu pada kalangan minoritas akan membuat orang lain semakin terjerat oleh hutang dan defisit keuangannya berlanjut. Bahkan secara ekonomis kesenjangan kekayaan antara orang yang surplus of goods and money akan mengekploitasi dan menzalimi masyarakat yang mengalami defisit sedangkan masyarakat yang defisit cenderung konsumtif dan tidak produktif, sebab faktor-faktor produksi dikuasai oleh segelintir masyarakat.
Masyarakat yang minoritas itu akan menahan asset kekayaaan jangan sampai terjadi kerugian dan akan hanya menginvestasikan kekayaannya pada suatu daerah yang akan meminimalisir tingkat cost yang harus dibayar misalnya apakah upah buruh di Indonesia misalnya lebih murah bila dibandingkan dengan negara lain, apakah buruh tidak akan melakukan mogok bila terjadi pemanjangan jam kerja yang berkonsekuensi pada penaikan upah seharusnya, namun upah minimim buruh tidak di naikkan. Yang berkaitan dengan stabilitas investasi si pemilik modal, sehingga penambahan keuntungan dari modal produksi suatu barang yang diproduksi akan menghasilkan keuntungan yang signifikan. Modal akan diinvest bila keuntungan akan dapat diukur secara fix, sehingga wajar al-Qur’an benar-benar mengecam terhadap praktek konsentrasi kekayaan dan menganjurkan untuk tegaknya keadilan dan kebaikan dalam level sosial ekonomi suatu masyarakat hal ini juga ditegaskan oleh Allah dalam surah Al-Hasyr ayat 7.
Dalam sisi lain biaya kompensasi terabaikan sebab tidak kuatnya ikatan hukum pengelolaan dan sumber daya alam yang berbasis pada ekonomi rakyat, sehingga dampak sosiologis-ekonomis sangat terasa pada masyarakat sekitar daerah ekploitasi.
Banyak ayat Al-Qur'an yang menyiratkan, yang harus dapat dipahami secara kontekstual karena Nabi SAW, menurut Asghar Ali telah mampu mengadakan revolusi kebudayaan, struktur masyarakat dan politik pada masa itu. Sehinggga yang patut dikaji adalah kemiskinan umat Islam bukanlah disebabkan karena peluang kerja yang minim, tidak mempunyai sumber daya atau memang kemiskinan kultural. Tapi lebih disebabkan tidak seimbangnya kehidupan social-ekonomi dan tidak berlakunya pendistribusian kekayaan secara Adil.
Sejak awal perjuangan Nabi telah menggerakkan proses perubahan yang mendalam dalam kehidupan social ekonomi pada masa awal Islam, yang berakibat pada tumbangnya kelompok vested interest yang ada di Mekah, secara serius beliau sangat prihatin terhadap nasib kaum tertindas di Mekkah, sampai-sampai keprihatinannya itu diabadikan dalam Al-Qur'an yang turun pada masa itu. Oleh karenanya, sebagian besar istilah yang digunakan di dalam Al-Qur'an haruslah dipahami dalam kontek perubahan sosial ekonomi masyarakat Arab waktu itu.
Dalam struktur sosial yang banyak melahirkan kendala baik bagi kemajuan ekonomi seperti yang terjadi dewasa ini, yaitu struktur yang represif dan hanya melestarikan keterbelakangan, pandangan rasional tentang agama dengan berbagai kompleks transendentalnya, tidaklah menarik perhatian masyarakat, apa yang menarik bagi mereka dalam suasana keterbelakangan itu adalah agama kerakyatan dengan segala perangkat ritualnya. Agama adalah untuk melayani kebutuhan psikologis bagi kesengsaraan duniawi mereka. Dalam persoalan ekonomi misalnya agama kerakyatan merupakan wujud nyata dari bangkitnya ekonomi kerakyatan yang berbasis prinsip-prinsip ekonomi Islam yang menjunjung tinggi nilai-nilai kemanusian, kesejahteraan, keadilan, kooperatif, persaudaraan dalam mewujudkan perannya sebagai khalifatu fil al-ard.
Bagaimana khutbah-khutbah awal Islam yang disampaikan oleh Nabi, apakah khutbah-khutbah beliau merupakana refresentasi dari penguatan terhadap system yang membelenggu kreatifitas umat namun justru kreatifitas dan kreasi umat manusia yang tidak berseberangan dengan prinsip dasar Islam akan direduce, dapat dilihat bagaimana Al-Qur'an mengecam praktek yang kontraproduktif bagi kemajuan kehidupan umat yang berkwalitas seperti penimbunan kekayaan dan kemegahan duniawi dikutuk secara sangat keras, perdagangan dengan riba, eksploitasi terhadap budak, jual beli ijon dan sebagainya masih banyak lagi praktek ekonomi yang dilarang oleh Nabi.
Sehingga Alasan inilah yang membuat para pedagang Mekkah itu kemudian menentang Nabi, dan menjadikannya sebagai musuh sejati mereka. Ini karena vested interest mereka terganggu secara serius. Kaum kaya Mekkah mula-mula menawarkan bujukan bersifat material kepada Nabi untuk menghentikan khotbah tentang dokrin egalitariannya itu. Tapi beliau menolak untuk berkompromi dengan kaum kaya itu sehingga mereka terus melakukan tekanan-tekanan dan mereka tidak begitu gelisah pada dokrin-dokrin keagamaan yang dikhotbahkan Nabi. Nampaknya lebih digelisahkan oleh konsekuensi-konsekuensi sosio-ekonomi dari ajaran-ajaran itu, serta oleh serangan Nabi yang sangat tajam terhadap kekayaan.
Al-Qur'an menunjukkan bahwa yang mereka peroleh itu adalah sebagai akibat konsentrasi pemilikan dan monopoli perdagangan yang tidak sah. Alasan mengapa Nabi mengecam para saudagar-saudagar kaya di Mekah adalah karena mereka akan menganggu keseimbangan sosial (Sosial Balance). Maka dalam Islam untuk mengurangi konsentrasi kekayaan itu terdapat ajaran zakat dan sedekah, yang berfungsi sebagai ritual-sosial dan bahkan zakat dan sedekah itu sangat tinggi nilainya dan arus diimbangi dengan keikhlasan (ridho), sebab dalam memberikan sedekah tidaklah boleh menghardik atau menyebut-nyebut sedekahnya baik ketika memberi atau tidak memberi. Di sinilah filosofi dasar konsep martabat Manusia (human dignity) dalam Islam. Memberi sedekah bukanlah memberi apa yang menjadi milik kita namun merupakan pemberian hak peminta dan hak si miskin yang telah bercampur dengan harta yang kita miliki sebagaimana Al-Qur’an menegaskan “Di dalam harta-harta kalian ada hak si miskin dan si minta-minta.
Dalam konsep Zakat, seharusnya zakat tidak dibatasi 2,5 %, sebab kesenjangan antara kaya dan miskin yang terjadi saat ini sangat jauh sekali dan juga problem ekonomi moderen sangat kompleks di mana industri kapitalis telah membedakan upah buruh (wages earners) dan keinginan para pemilik modal (capitalists) yang tentu berbeda kepentingan para buruh bertahan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan dasarnya sedangkan para pemilik modal bertahan dan terus mencari legitimasi kebenaran dalam mengeruk keuntungan, sehingga wajar bila pemilik modal diharuskan untuk mempraktekkan prinsip konsep human dignity yang mana pemilik modal telah diuntungkan oleh kaum buruh tanpa mereka produksi tidak berjalan namun ini hanya menjadi kerangka kosong karena pemilik modal lebih mementingkan pada self interestnya daripada kesejahteraan manusia seluruhnya.
Manusia yang menjunjung tinggi persaudaraan, dan menjalankan fungsinya selaku hamba Tuhan dan keyakinannya pada hak miliknya yang hanya merupakan titipan sementara dan kepemilikannya terhadap harta bukanlah kepemilikan yang bersifat mutlak. Pemahaman seperti ini jarang kita temui dalam kehidupan para pemilik modal tersebut entah dikarenakan economic power justru bukan pada masyarakat muslim atau pemahaman ilmu ekonomi kesejahteraan yang menurut Amartya Sen itu berada dalam kondisi yang sangat mengkhawatirkan sehingga tidak ada jalan bagi ilmu ekonomi kesejahteraan itu untuk bertempat. Akibat yang terjadi adalah mengeruk keuntungan dengan jalan meminimalkan upah buruh dan mengandakan uang dengan jalan bunga atau riba, atau prinsip cooperatif dalam ekonomi tidak dipraktekkan secara benar namun lebih banyak dalam pertimbangan-pertimbangan laba dan rugi sehingga pengelolaan resiko yang sangat tinggi dengan melupakan asset ekonomi menjadi idle dan berputar pada sector keuangan dan perbankan saja.
Apalagi Konsep riba dalam ekonomi modern, bukanlah bertujuan semata-mata membangun bank bebas bunga, namun larangan riba adalah merupakan wujud agama yang menjawab semua problem sosial ekonomi dalam ekonomi kapitalis, sebab ekonomi kapitalis mendapatkan keuntungan dari produksi dan ekploitasi. Essensi riba seharusnya dipahami atas dasar ekploitasi tersebut, bukan semata-mata dari perubahan suku bunga yang tetap. Pelarangan riba tidak bisa direalisasikan selama masih terdapat tindakan ekploitasi dalam segala bentuknya.
Islam telah memberikan visi suatu masyarakat yang baik dengan memberikan kriteria utamanya, termasuk di dalamnya institusi yang dapat kita lihat dalam perjalanan sejarah. Namun demikian, institusi ini sendiri bukanlah merupakan tujuan dari ajaran Islam, namun hanya merupakan suatu instrumen yang bisa berubah dan menurutnya harus berubah ketika instrumen tersebut telah menyimpang dari nilai yang dibawa oleh al-Qur’an.
Sebagai usahawan swasta dalam skala kecil dalam suatu masyarakat komersil seperti Mekkah tidak bisa disamakan dengan usahawan swasta pada zaman sekarang ini. Usahawan swasta sekarang ini terkumpul dalam bentuk kartel besar, kelompok monopoli dan koorporasi internasional, sehingga potensi merugikan kepentingan masyarakat lebih besar. Maka dalam situasi ini, sektor nasional dan sosial harus mampu melayani kepentingan masyarakat secara umum, karena – sesuai dengan prinsip yang dikemukakan oleh ash-Syatibi – menjaga kepentingan masyarakat luas di atas kepentingan pribadi akan lebih menjaga spirit dan sistem nilai yang dibawa oleh Islam. Wallahu A’lam
Oleh: Sucipto
Penulis adalah Mahasiswa Program Pasca Sarjana
Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta
Perkembangan ekonomi Islam di Indonesia telah di mulai di tahun 1992 dengan berdirinya Bank Muamalat Indonesia, dengan berdirinya bank muamalat, maka bank-bank yang tidak menerapkan sistem bagi hasil dalam transaksinya mulai beralih membentuk bank yang berbasis syariah ini, fhenomena ini mulai tanpak diakhir dan awal tahun 2000-an.
Tanggapan positifpun datang silih berganti hingga BI sebagai lembaga regulasi perbankan nasional yang pada awalnya “wait and see“ mulai serius dengan membentuk biro syariah di bank Indonesia.
Dalam praktek sehari-hari secara formal memakai pakaian yang islami dan ini wajar sebagi service bagi pelanggan namun sisi yang lain soal etika dan moral dalam ekonomi apakah juga sesuai dengan prinsip-prinsip ekonomi Islam. Hal ini penting sebab Islam tidak hanya mementingkan lahiriyah tetapi harus juga sejalan dengan bathiniah, sebab hal ini menyangkut soal keadilan dan ihsan dalam perilaku ekonomi kita.
Soal moral dan etika awal kita berpijak dalam mengembangkan ekonomi Islam baik di dunia perbankan ataupun dalam aktivitas ekonomi sehari-hari, karena kita saat ini sedang berada pada zaman industrialisasi yang pondasinya adalah kemajuan ekonomi, mungkin tanpa pertimbangan (menyangkut) moral dan etika apalagi agama, sebab semenjak keynes mengembangkan teori of interest maka dunia telah mengalami kegagalan ekonomi.
Lalu bagaimana dengan ekonomi Islam? sangat penting untuk menguji alternatif Islam dalam sistem perekonomian saat ini, dengan kreatifitas untuk menginterpretasikan doktrin dan prinsip tertentu yang ditentukan oleh Islam yang berkenaan dengan masalah sosial ekonomi, jika Islam dapat menyelesaikan problem ekonomi yang telah terwarisi selama ribuan generasi akan dapat memecahkan berbagai kesulitan ekonomi dalam zaman industri itu. Satu kata kunci di sini adalah Al-Quran, sumber dari prinsip Islam yang mengajarkan kita dengan memberi petunjuk yang luas mengenai aspek spritual dan aspek sosial. Dan juga memberikan suatu konsep tentang masyarakat di mana konsep masyarakat tersebut diilhami dari prinsip dasar Islam: dengan merestrukturisasi dan reformulasi konsep, jika perlu, yang tentu secara sah diterima oleh ahli ilmu agama di sepanjang zaman.
Moral dan etika ekonomi Islam dalam Al-Qur’an terbentuk dalam dua hubungan yaitu kontektual dan transendental. Dimana Islam secara kontektual di dalam Al-Qur’an menekankan pada perdagangan (tijarah) yang baik, jujur, dan syahid kepada Allah. Dengan mengecam praktek yang tidak jujur dan tidak adil dalam usaha untuk mendapat kekayaan.
Kejujuran dalam melakukan transaksi ekonomi dan mengutuk ekploitasi atas tenaga dan skill manusia. Karena itu Al Qur’an memberi kita konsep masyarakat bebas dari ekploitasi, ekploitasi adalah bagian dari kezhaliman dan bertentangan dengan keadilan, dimana dalam ekploitasi terdapat ketidakadilan.
Sedangkan Aspek Islam yang transendental concern terhadap prinsip–prinsip ekonomi. Baik transaksi perdagangan ataupun produksi harus bebas dari ekploitasi, karena konsep al-'adl dan al-ihsan (kebajikan dan keadilan) telah ditegaskan di dalam Al-Qur’an katakan: “Allah menyuruh kamu untuk berbuat keadilan dan kebajikan”. Konsep ini akan mengantarkan kita dalam meminimalisir ketegangan sosial antara kaya dan miskin, karena apabila keadilan dan ihsan tidak ditegakkan akan terjadi social-chaos.
Konsep ‘adl dan ihsan tidak bisa terjadi bila kekayaan masih terkonsentrasi pada minoritas masyarakat. Sebab dengan terkonsentrasinya kekayaan itu pada kalangan minoritas akan membuat orang lain semakin terjerat oleh hutang dan defisit keuangannya berlanjut. Bahkan secara ekonomis kesenjangan kekayaan antara orang yang surplus of goods and money akan mengekploitasi dan menzalimi masyarakat yang mengalami defisit sedangkan masyarakat yang defisit cenderung konsumtif dan tidak produktif, sebab faktor-faktor produksi dikuasai oleh segelintir masyarakat.
Masyarakat yang minoritas itu akan menahan asset kekayaaan jangan sampai terjadi kerugian dan akan hanya menginvestasikan kekayaannya pada suatu daerah yang akan meminimalisir tingkat cost yang harus dibayar misalnya apakah upah buruh di Indonesia misalnya lebih murah bila dibandingkan dengan negara lain, apakah buruh tidak akan melakukan mogok bila terjadi pemanjangan jam kerja yang berkonsekuensi pada penaikan upah seharusnya, namun upah minimim buruh tidak di naikkan. Yang berkaitan dengan stabilitas investasi si pemilik modal, sehingga penambahan keuntungan dari modal produksi suatu barang yang diproduksi akan menghasilkan keuntungan yang signifikan. Modal akan diinvest bila keuntungan akan dapat diukur secara fix, sehingga wajar al-Qur’an benar-benar mengecam terhadap praktek konsentrasi kekayaan dan menganjurkan untuk tegaknya keadilan dan kebaikan dalam level sosial ekonomi suatu masyarakat hal ini juga ditegaskan oleh Allah dalam surah Al-Hasyr ayat 7.
Dalam sisi lain biaya kompensasi terabaikan sebab tidak kuatnya ikatan hukum pengelolaan dan sumber daya alam yang berbasis pada ekonomi rakyat, sehingga dampak sosiologis-ekonomis sangat terasa pada masyarakat sekitar daerah ekploitasi.
Banyak ayat Al-Qur'an yang menyiratkan, yang harus dapat dipahami secara kontekstual karena Nabi SAW, menurut Asghar Ali telah mampu mengadakan revolusi kebudayaan, struktur masyarakat dan politik pada masa itu. Sehinggga yang patut dikaji adalah kemiskinan umat Islam bukanlah disebabkan karena peluang kerja yang minim, tidak mempunyai sumber daya atau memang kemiskinan kultural. Tapi lebih disebabkan tidak seimbangnya kehidupan social-ekonomi dan tidak berlakunya pendistribusian kekayaan secara Adil.
Sejak awal perjuangan Nabi telah menggerakkan proses perubahan yang mendalam dalam kehidupan social ekonomi pada masa awal Islam, yang berakibat pada tumbangnya kelompok vested interest yang ada di Mekah, secara serius beliau sangat prihatin terhadap nasib kaum tertindas di Mekkah, sampai-sampai keprihatinannya itu diabadikan dalam Al-Qur'an yang turun pada masa itu. Oleh karenanya, sebagian besar istilah yang digunakan di dalam Al-Qur'an haruslah dipahami dalam kontek perubahan sosial ekonomi masyarakat Arab waktu itu.
Dalam struktur sosial yang banyak melahirkan kendala baik bagi kemajuan ekonomi seperti yang terjadi dewasa ini, yaitu struktur yang represif dan hanya melestarikan keterbelakangan, pandangan rasional tentang agama dengan berbagai kompleks transendentalnya, tidaklah menarik perhatian masyarakat, apa yang menarik bagi mereka dalam suasana keterbelakangan itu adalah agama kerakyatan dengan segala perangkat ritualnya. Agama adalah untuk melayani kebutuhan psikologis bagi kesengsaraan duniawi mereka. Dalam persoalan ekonomi misalnya agama kerakyatan merupakan wujud nyata dari bangkitnya ekonomi kerakyatan yang berbasis prinsip-prinsip ekonomi Islam yang menjunjung tinggi nilai-nilai kemanusian, kesejahteraan, keadilan, kooperatif, persaudaraan dalam mewujudkan perannya sebagai khalifatu fil al-ard.
Bagaimana khutbah-khutbah awal Islam yang disampaikan oleh Nabi, apakah khutbah-khutbah beliau merupakana refresentasi dari penguatan terhadap system yang membelenggu kreatifitas umat namun justru kreatifitas dan kreasi umat manusia yang tidak berseberangan dengan prinsip dasar Islam akan direduce, dapat dilihat bagaimana Al-Qur'an mengecam praktek yang kontraproduktif bagi kemajuan kehidupan umat yang berkwalitas seperti penimbunan kekayaan dan kemegahan duniawi dikutuk secara sangat keras, perdagangan dengan riba, eksploitasi terhadap budak, jual beli ijon dan sebagainya masih banyak lagi praktek ekonomi yang dilarang oleh Nabi.
Sehingga Alasan inilah yang membuat para pedagang Mekkah itu kemudian menentang Nabi, dan menjadikannya sebagai musuh sejati mereka. Ini karena vested interest mereka terganggu secara serius. Kaum kaya Mekkah mula-mula menawarkan bujukan bersifat material kepada Nabi untuk menghentikan khotbah tentang dokrin egalitariannya itu. Tapi beliau menolak untuk berkompromi dengan kaum kaya itu sehingga mereka terus melakukan tekanan-tekanan dan mereka tidak begitu gelisah pada dokrin-dokrin keagamaan yang dikhotbahkan Nabi. Nampaknya lebih digelisahkan oleh konsekuensi-konsekuensi sosio-ekonomi dari ajaran-ajaran itu, serta oleh serangan Nabi yang sangat tajam terhadap kekayaan.
Al-Qur'an menunjukkan bahwa yang mereka peroleh itu adalah sebagai akibat konsentrasi pemilikan dan monopoli perdagangan yang tidak sah. Alasan mengapa Nabi mengecam para saudagar-saudagar kaya di Mekah adalah karena mereka akan menganggu keseimbangan sosial (Sosial Balance). Maka dalam Islam untuk mengurangi konsentrasi kekayaan itu terdapat ajaran zakat dan sedekah, yang berfungsi sebagai ritual-sosial dan bahkan zakat dan sedekah itu sangat tinggi nilainya dan arus diimbangi dengan keikhlasan (ridho), sebab dalam memberikan sedekah tidaklah boleh menghardik atau menyebut-nyebut sedekahnya baik ketika memberi atau tidak memberi. Di sinilah filosofi dasar konsep martabat Manusia (human dignity) dalam Islam. Memberi sedekah bukanlah memberi apa yang menjadi milik kita namun merupakan pemberian hak peminta dan hak si miskin yang telah bercampur dengan harta yang kita miliki sebagaimana Al-Qur’an menegaskan “Di dalam harta-harta kalian ada hak si miskin dan si minta-minta.
Dalam konsep Zakat, seharusnya zakat tidak dibatasi 2,5 %, sebab kesenjangan antara kaya dan miskin yang terjadi saat ini sangat jauh sekali dan juga problem ekonomi moderen sangat kompleks di mana industri kapitalis telah membedakan upah buruh (wages earners) dan keinginan para pemilik modal (capitalists) yang tentu berbeda kepentingan para buruh bertahan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan dasarnya sedangkan para pemilik modal bertahan dan terus mencari legitimasi kebenaran dalam mengeruk keuntungan, sehingga wajar bila pemilik modal diharuskan untuk mempraktekkan prinsip konsep human dignity yang mana pemilik modal telah diuntungkan oleh kaum buruh tanpa mereka produksi tidak berjalan namun ini hanya menjadi kerangka kosong karena pemilik modal lebih mementingkan pada self interestnya daripada kesejahteraan manusia seluruhnya.
Manusia yang menjunjung tinggi persaudaraan, dan menjalankan fungsinya selaku hamba Tuhan dan keyakinannya pada hak miliknya yang hanya merupakan titipan sementara dan kepemilikannya terhadap harta bukanlah kepemilikan yang bersifat mutlak. Pemahaman seperti ini jarang kita temui dalam kehidupan para pemilik modal tersebut entah dikarenakan economic power justru bukan pada masyarakat muslim atau pemahaman ilmu ekonomi kesejahteraan yang menurut Amartya Sen itu berada dalam kondisi yang sangat mengkhawatirkan sehingga tidak ada jalan bagi ilmu ekonomi kesejahteraan itu untuk bertempat. Akibat yang terjadi adalah mengeruk keuntungan dengan jalan meminimalkan upah buruh dan mengandakan uang dengan jalan bunga atau riba, atau prinsip cooperatif dalam ekonomi tidak dipraktekkan secara benar namun lebih banyak dalam pertimbangan-pertimbangan laba dan rugi sehingga pengelolaan resiko yang sangat tinggi dengan melupakan asset ekonomi menjadi idle dan berputar pada sector keuangan dan perbankan saja.
Apalagi Konsep riba dalam ekonomi modern, bukanlah bertujuan semata-mata membangun bank bebas bunga, namun larangan riba adalah merupakan wujud agama yang menjawab semua problem sosial ekonomi dalam ekonomi kapitalis, sebab ekonomi kapitalis mendapatkan keuntungan dari produksi dan ekploitasi. Essensi riba seharusnya dipahami atas dasar ekploitasi tersebut, bukan semata-mata dari perubahan suku bunga yang tetap. Pelarangan riba tidak bisa direalisasikan selama masih terdapat tindakan ekploitasi dalam segala bentuknya.
Islam telah memberikan visi suatu masyarakat yang baik dengan memberikan kriteria utamanya, termasuk di dalamnya institusi yang dapat kita lihat dalam perjalanan sejarah. Namun demikian, institusi ini sendiri bukanlah merupakan tujuan dari ajaran Islam, namun hanya merupakan suatu instrumen yang bisa berubah dan menurutnya harus berubah ketika instrumen tersebut telah menyimpang dari nilai yang dibawa oleh al-Qur’an.
Sebagai usahawan swasta dalam skala kecil dalam suatu masyarakat komersil seperti Mekkah tidak bisa disamakan dengan usahawan swasta pada zaman sekarang ini. Usahawan swasta sekarang ini terkumpul dalam bentuk kartel besar, kelompok monopoli dan koorporasi internasional, sehingga potensi merugikan kepentingan masyarakat lebih besar. Maka dalam situasi ini, sektor nasional dan sosial harus mampu melayani kepentingan masyarakat secara umum, karena – sesuai dengan prinsip yang dikemukakan oleh ash-Syatibi – menjaga kepentingan masyarakat luas di atas kepentingan pribadi akan lebih menjaga spirit dan sistem nilai yang dibawa oleh Islam. Wallahu A’lam
