Islamic Development Bank


The Islamic Development Bank is a multilateral development finance institution that is focused on islamic finance located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There are 57 shareholding member states with the largest single shareholder being Saudi Arabia.

History

It was founded in 1973 by the Finance Ministers at the first Organisation of the Islamic Conference with the support of the king of Saudi Arabia at the time, and began its activities on 3 April 1975.
On the 22 May 2013, IDB tripled its authorized capital to $150 billion to better serve Muslims in member and non-member countries. The Bank has received credit ratings of AAA from Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch. Saudi Arabia holds about one quarter of the bank's paid up capital. The IDB is an observer at the United Nations General Assembly.

Membership

The present membership of the Bank consists of 57 countries. The basic condition for membership is that the prospective member country should be a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation , pay its contribution to the capital of the Bank and be willing to accept such terms and conditions as may be decided upon by the IDB Board of Governors.
Ranked on the basis of paid-up capital, major shareholders include:
  1. Saudi Arabia
  2. Algeria
  3. Iran
  4. Egypt
  5. Turkey
  6. United Arab Emirates
  7. Kuwait
  8. Pakistan
  9. Libya
  10. Indonesia

    Structure

IDB has evolved into a group of five Entities, consisting of Islamic Development Bank , Islamic Research & Training Institute , Islamic Corporation for Development of the Private Sector , Islamic Corporation for Insurance of Investment and Export Credit and International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation.

Activities

IDB Group is engaged in a wide range of specialized and integrated activities such as:
Dr Ali had previously declared that IDB was responsible for the smooth functioning of al-Quds Intifada Fund and al-Aqsa Fund, both established during an Arab summit in Cairo in October 2000. According to the final communiqué of the summit, “Al-Quds Intifada Fund will have a capital of 200 million dollars to be allocated for disbursement to the families of Palestinian martyrs fallen in the Intifada.”
However, a Wikileaks cable clearly shows that the US State Department investigated the IDB's links to these two funds and found no "evidence sufficient to corroborate Israeli and press allegations of IDB links to terrorism".