Indonesia Vice President, KH Ma'ruf Amin encouraged public literacy towards sharia economy and finance. This is because the national islamic financial literacy rate has only reached 8.93 percent.

Meanwhile, based on the National Sharia Financial Inclusion Index reached 9.1 percent. The Vice President said that the Bank Indonesia (BI) survey in 2020 also showed that the national sharia economic and financial literacy index was 16.2 percent.

"This condition reflects that it still takes hard work in order for people's understanding of sharia economy and finance to be improved," said Kiai Ma'ruf at the 20th National Scientific Meeting (Temilnas) in 2021 organized by the Silaturahim Forum for Islamic Economic Studies (Fossei), Monday (26/7).

The Vice President emphasized that the success of sharia economic development, one of which is influenced by the level of community literacy towards sharia economy and finance. Vice President said, the higher the islamic economic and financial literacy in the community, the higher the use of halal and sharia goods and services by the community.

"Efforts to improve community literacy continue to be pursued both through formal education channels academically, vocationally and professionally, as well as through nonformal education in the form of socialization," said Ma'ruf.

Sharia economic performance in the country in general continues to grow well despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the 2020 Sharia Economic and Financial Report issued by Bank Indonesia, Indonesia's sharia economy contraction in 2020 reached 1.72 percent (year on year). He said the contraction was not as deep as that experienced by the national economy which reached 2.07 percent. In addition, the Islamic Finance Country Index (IFCI) 2020 report also mentions Indonesia ranked second with a score of 82.01 after Malaysia out of 42 countries surveyed related to Sharia finance.

"This is an opportunity that must be optimized by all parties involved in islamic economic and financial development," he said. 

The National Committee on Sharia Economy and Finance (KNEKS) supports the improvement of Sharia economic literacy with more innovative. Director of Sharia Financial Services KNEKS, Taufik Hidayat, said that literacy will increase demand organically and sustainably.

"What is still under-worked is more up-to-date literacy by involving influencers or creating viral content on social media," he told Republika, Monday (26/7).

The empowerment of mosques and pesantren as points of Islamic financial literacy also needs to be encouraged to have a greater impact. Literacy will continue to be a shared task of all sharia economic stakeholders, not just industrial tasks.

Improved literacy can be done by universities through seminars, research, community service, regulatory efforts, government, community leaders, and also the community. Sustainable literacy is essential to improve the demand side.

"Increased demand is closely related to literacy, can also be supported by policies with impartiality," he said.

In addition to literacy, policies or regulations can develop sharia industry inorganic. Inorganic policies such as the qanun of Sharia financial institutions in Aceh or the establishment of the Hajj Financial Management Agency (BPKH),

Taufik said that there are at least three main things that must be done in parallel for the development of Sharia banking. These three things are increasing demand, increasing supply, and infrastructure development.

Increased supply means strengthening capabilities and capital from the side of sharia banks. This will affect the pricing or margin of sharia banks which is highly dependent on the cost of fund structure or fund costs.

To get low funding costs, banks must have a high CASA ratio or cheap funds. CASA is highly supported by IT and service capabilities to work on the retail segment and strong in transactional banking.

"This certainly requires IT and HR investment, where currently on average sharia banks are still lagging behind conventional banks," he said.