Hammamet — Finance Minister Houcine Dimassi announced, on Monday in Hammamet, the start of a comprehensive legal system to rule Islamic funding, including a solidarity-based Ettakaful insurance system.

Opening works of the Eleventh Carthage Symposium on "Capacity of Arab Insurance and Re-insurance Industry to Face up to New and Important Risks," Mr. Dimassi said that Islamic financing had proved its efficiency while the traditional finance system had undergone regression, notably in the United States of America and Europe, as a result of the sovereign credits.

"Complementarity and integration of the insurance institutions in the Arab and African countries have become today an absolute necessity: it is not any longer just a choice," he argued.

Arab Insurance Union Secretary-General Abdelkhalek Raouf Khalil said that "Arab countries need stronger insurance companies, ones that would stimulate the region's economy."

He also emphasised the imperative to further rely on the Arab re-insurance companies, whose number stands at 16.

The Arab insurance sector counts 400 companies with an annual average issuance of allowances worth 24 million dollars.