afrol News, 16 April - Equity markets in Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria delivered the highest returns for investors in companies deemed to comply with Islamic law during the first quarter of 2008.

But Shariah-compliant equities in Turkey, China and India experienced the largest declines over the quarter.

This was contained in the findings of Standard & Poor's Index Services. The announcement coincides with the launching of Standard & Poor's Global Shariah Index Series in more than 60 new country plus sector-specific Shariah indices.

The enhanced index series screens more than 12,000 stocks from 52 developed and emerging markets and 10 Global Industry Classification Standard sectors. This makes it by far the world's broadset Shariah equity dataset avaialable to date.

"Islamic investors seeking a structured approach to investment now have the ability to measure their performance according to strict geographic and sector preferences," says Alka Banerjee, Vice President of Index Services at Standard & Poor's.

"The launch of these new country and sector indices completes the rollout of the S&P Global Benchmark Shariah Index Series, which now covers more than $34 trillion of the world's market capitalization."

During the first quarter of 2008, Shariah-compliant equities in Morocco returned 34.45% on a total return basis, followed by Egypt (18.93%) and Nigeria (13.42%). In Turkey, Shariah-compliant stocks fell by 26.67%, followed by China (-26.57%) and India (-26.43%).

By staff writer

© afrol News

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