JAKARTA, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has much more opportunities to obtain plenty of funds from International market by issuing Islamic bonds, or popularly known in Arabic as sukuk, to finance its state budget in the coming years, a senior official at Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) said here on Friday.

    "At least 4.74 billion U.S. dollars of funds from Islamic world are available to be used at the moment. Indonesia had just retrieved a small amount of it. Indonesia should grab this opportunity quickly by issuing more international sukuk," Head of HSBC Amanah Indonesian branch Mahmoud Abushamma told Xinhua here.

    He said that Indonesia saw a huge success in its initial international Islamic bond issue that was done in mid April this year, valued at 650 million dollars.

    All of Indonesian international Islamic bond issued at that time was entirely sold out in 36 hours after the announcement and raised 4.6 billion dollars of funds as the sale was oversubscribed seven times from the initial value, Mahmoud said.

    HSBC Amanah, that acted as the joint book runner and joint lead manager over the Islamic bond issue learned that some 230 investors from across the world acquired the Islamic bond.

    "With such a success and very good structure, Indonesia will drive opening the Islamic bond market in the region," Mahmoud said.

    Before handling the government's international Islamic bond issue, HSBC Amanah was successful to handle Islamic bond issue for state-run oil and gas firm Pertamina and steel producer Krakatau Steel worth 200 million dollars and 50 million dollars respectively in 2006 and 2007.

    On Aug. 3 before the parliament members, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono conveyed that government prefers to issue Islamic bonds and soft loans from friendly countries rather than taking the funds to finance its development budget from foreign donor agencies.

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