IAEI - Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI), Group of Islamic Development Bank (IDB), The National Board of Zakat (BAZNAS), and Central Bank Of Indonesia held "The Third International Conference on Islamic Financial Sector Development" on 28 August 2014 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The conference aimed to enhance public awareness of zakat management. Thus, it will give positive impact to economy. Beside that, it aimed to formulating the strategy of International cooperation and collaboration of Muslim countries to optimize their Zakat and Awqaf potency as financial safety net instrument for microeconomy sector.

The conference resulted Conference Communique which read by Prof. Dr. Abdul Ghafar Ismail, Head of Research Division IDB.

1. Zakat and Awqaf sectors have a potential to play significant roles in supporting sustainable economic development as they could provide the society with zero cost zakat funds and awqaf assets. The presence of well-managed and well supervised zakat and awqaf sector could potentially broaden the economic production base.

2. The areas that are potential to develop for zakat and awqaf sectors in the future are the regulatory and supervisory framework. There is a deep need to develop international references for zakat regulations so that the collection and disbursement program can be conducted more effectively. In a longer term, zakat and awqaf sectors should show its operational quality so that it could earn trust from the public and hence its contribution to the economic development can be performed more significantly. 

3. International collaboration is very important to facilitate the compilation of best practices into one set of regulatory and supervisory principles. An establishment of a Working Group aiming at delivering internationally acceptable zakat core principles is very much appreciated. However, these development efforts are not something that can be materialized at once. This requires persistence and long-term commitment by the stake-holders, including regulatory bodies, zakat collecting institutions and the academics.

4. Zakat and Awqaf sectors have to have sound operating management, regulation, and supervision which are at par to the other financial sectors such as banking sector, insurance and capital market. The operations of Zakat and Awqaf should reflect the elements of transparency, accountability, responsibility, credibility, efficiency, and other important values of good governance. On the top of that, Zakat and Awqaf sectors are even challenged to provide more values that the conventional system has such as equality and morality.

5. This communiqué calls for further follow-up and implementation of the outcomes delivered by the conference we have today.