The additional injection was more than the RM20-RM30 billion the fund had estimated it would allocate for 2018.

Malaysia is a leading market in the global Islamic finance industry in terms of regulation, standardisation and sukuk issuance. The country issued more than half of the world’s sukuk in the first half of 2016.

For 2017, the retirement savings fund has already allocated RM100 billion for the fund, which is equivalent to about 15% of the EPF’s total investments of RM681.71 billion as of March 2016.

Of the initial RM100 billion allocated, a total of RM59.03 billion have been taken up, the pension fund said in a statement on Tuesday.

Chief executive officer Shahril Ridza Ridzuan said the fund had anticipated that at least half of the initial RM100 billion fund to be taken up.

“For (the 2018 shariah fund), we have allocated RM50 billion as further injection,” Ridzuan said in the statement.

He said that about 45% of EPF’s total investment assets are shariah compliant and the fund expects to grow these assets by at least RM25 billion a year on average.