Jakarta (ANTARA) – Vice President Ma’ruf Amin encouraged the management of the Islamic Economic Community (MES) to invite conventional business players to adopt Islamic principles of business to help the government develop the Islamic economy and finance in Indonesia.”I would like to stress the importance of inviting conventional entrepreneurs to embrace the Islamic principles of business,”, he remarked at the 6th National Conference of MES in Jakarta on Sunday. In his speech, VP Amin, who also serves as the chairman of the MES advisory board, underscored the crucial role of business actors in the development of the Islamic economy and finance. Entrepreneurs have a vital role in mobilizing the established instruments of Islamic economy and finance, he said. “The halal industry would not advance without entrepreneurs. If there were no entrepreneurs, no one would give zakat (alms), waqf, and infaq (voluntary charity),” he explained. Therefore, the vice president asked MES to apply three steps in a bid to help business actors grow, including by conducting business incubation with the aim of producing and developing entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the second and third steps he suggested are related to the need for MES to assist and strengthen the existing Islamic businesses and invite more people to run similar businesses. On the same occasion, Minister of State-owned Enterprises and Chairman of MES, Erick Thohir, stated the organization’s commitment to investing all-out efforts to develop the Islamic economy for the sake of the welfare of the people. “We continue striving to make MES a beneficial organization to the people that can play its expected role as the catalyst for the development of businesses according to Islamic principles,” he pointed out. t the conference, Thohir symbolically handed over earthquake-resistant houses to the head of a social foundation as a follow-up to the handling of the impacts resulting from the earthquake that jolted Cianjur, West Java, in November last year.
Source: Antara News Agency