JAKARTA, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia will host the 3rd meeting of Shariah economic experts and practitioners as well as ulemas from across Southeast Asia in Jakarta on May 25-26, the national Antara news agency reported.

    "We saw Islamic finance development in Indonesia was thriving," said Mohamad Akram Laldin, executive director of the International Shariah Research Academy in Islamic Finance (ISRA), here on Monday while explaining why Indonesia had been chosen to be the host.

    The meeting, jointly held by ISRA, the National Shariah Councilof the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the Tazkia Islamic Economy High Learning Institute, will gather around 150 attendees from six member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to discuss operations, trade mechanism, foreign exchange and concept and mechanism of swap in Islamic financial institutions.

    Laldin envisaged in the future the countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, would become a unity for Shariah economic development.

    ISRA, headquartered in Malaysia, is overseen by Bank Negara Malaysia. The organization has initiated annual meetings of Shariah economic experts and ulemas that had for the past two years been held in Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.