MUI Chairman Responds to Plan for Merger of PT Bank Tabungan Syariah and PT Bank Muamalat

Romys Binekasri, CNBC Indonesia

Market

Friday, 01/19/2024 18:20 IWST

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Chairman of PP Muhammadiyah and Deputy General Chairman of MUI Anwar Abbas responded to PT Bank Tabungan Syariah (Persero) Tbk’s plan. merged its sharia business unit with PT Bank Muamalat Indonesia Tbk. or BMI.

His party did not agree because he hoped that BMI would remain with its paradigm of being from the people, belonging to the people, with the people and for the people.

“Therefore, the idea of merging Bank Muamalat with BTN Syariah should not be continued,” he said in a statement received by CNBC Indonesia, Friday (19/1/2024).

Anwar explained, the rejection of the merger of Muamalat and BTN Syariah with several considerations. First, so that the legacy of the previous founders who have worked hard to establish this bank remains intact.

Anwar explained that the founding of BMI came from among the people, especially from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the Association of Indonesian Muslim Scholars (ICMI), NU and Muhammadiyah as well as several Muslim entrepreneurs who then received support from the Government of the Republic of Indonesia.

This idea first emerged at an MUI workshop in August 1990. Hasan Basri, who at that time was the general chairman of the MUI, raised the theme of bank interest and banking issues.

He emphasized that although the establishment of Muamalat received support from the government, the first sharia bank in Indonesia was not a government bank or a state-owned bank but was a private bank owned by the people.

“So BMI is the first purely sharia bank which was founded in 1992, whose birth history is different from other sharia banks which are affiliated with conventional banks,” he said.

He continued, BMI had faced problems so to strengthen it, BMI invited foreign investors from the Middle East. After running well, this bank also faced problems again, so finally, to save it, the government encouraged BPKH to invest.

“But this does not mean that BMI has become a government-owned bank because the BPKH funds invested in BMI are not funds from the government but are funds belonging to the people,” he stressed.

Second, the party also wants that in the midst of the competitive world of banking in this country where the majority of people are Muslim, there will still be private banks that belong to the people.

“For this reason, in dealing with the BMI problem in the future, we hope that the approach used will not only use purely economic and business calculations, but we must also be able to pay attention to and maintain history,” he continued.

He added that currently we are no longer thinking about how to merge it with BTN Syariah or other banks, but rather jointly advancing and growing it. The steps that must be taken to achieve this goal are how we can mobilize elements of the community to get involved together.

“We have many Islamic mass organizations in this country, we also have many mosques, schools, colleges and hospitals as well as business enterprises owned by the community that can be mobilized for this. This will certainly be easy to do because with the entry of BPKH funds into BMI even though it is only new “around 1% of the total Hajj funds managed by him, we see that the people’s trust in BMI now appears to be getting stronger and increasing,” he said.

Therefore, the step that must be taken by the government is not to annex BMI to become a state-owned bank, but how the state can be present to make BMI continue to exist and make it a strong and good bank owned by the people.

“So the measure of the government’s success in dealing with the BMI problem is not seen and measured in terms of its success in making Bank Muamalat a state-owned bank but seen in terms of the government’s ability to create a supportive situation and conditions to make BMI remain a strong community-owned bank. advanced, trustworthy, and something to be proud of,” he concluded.

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