REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) mentioned how great the economic and financial potential of sharia is in Indonesia. With the largest Muslim population in the world, Jokowi sees that Indonesia has the opportunity to become a major player in the Islamic economy and finance. Indonesia, he said, must be able to take advantage of the large capital it already has.

In fact, Jokowi sees the phenomenon of the Islamic financial industry in Indonesia as a sleeping giant. Has great power, but unfortunately the existing power cannot be utilized. Seeing this condition, Jokowi continued, the government was trying to wake up the sleeping giant.

"The government has great concern to raise this giant. One of them is by building the largest Islamic bank in Indonesia," Jokowi said at the opening of the Indonesia Sharia Economic Festival (ISEF), Wednesday (28/10).

The concept of building the largest Islamic bank, said Jokowi, was by merging all state-owned Islamic bank assets into one giant Islamic bank. There are three sharia subsidiaries belonging to state-owned banks that were merged, namely PT BRI Syariah Tbk (BRIS), PT Bank Syariah Mandiri (BSM), and PT BNI Syariah (BNIS). The total assets owned by the merged bank reached a fantastic figure, IDR 214.6 trillion (per semester I 2020).