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KARACHI: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has presented a modest economic growth forecast of 3.7 percent for Pakistan for FY12, lower than government's target of 4.5 percent.

While clinging to its present marginal position in the mainstream of global financial markets, Islamic banking and Islamic finance has a long way to go to transform itself into a major player, mainly through standardization, uniformity, governance, transparency and innovation, in addition to consolidation.

There are 5 full-fledged Islamic banks operating in Pakistan and 15 conventional banks with Islamic banking branches. The growth in Islamic finance industry has been consistently in double digits. The share of the industry in the banking system has risen to over 7 percent from just 0.5 percent in 2002.