33 experts from 17 Arab, African and Asian countries discussed various issues related to Islamic Finance and exchanged their expertise in this field in a meeting that was held by ESCWA in coordination with the United Nations Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNSD) at the UN House in Beirut from 24 to 26 October 2017.
8 experts representing international organizations also took part in the meeting.

This meeting is part of the methodological work undertaken by the ESCWA Statistics Experts and the UNSD over the last few years. Issues on the implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts’ (SNA) recommendations for Islamic Finance were raised during several meetings in the Arab region organized by ESCWA.  The issue of Islamic Finance was also discussed by the Advisory Expert Group on National Accounts at its 10th meeting from 13 to 15 April 2016 in Paris. The Advisory Expert Group agreed that further research on the statistical implications of Islamic finance in the national accounts is required and that practical guidance on the treatment of Islamic finance transactions needs to be developed.  To this end, the Working Group on Islamic Finance was established. The findings of this meeting will be presented for discussion at the next meeting of the Advisory Expert Group on National Accounts in December 2017 at the United Nations, New York.